UsedBookShopping : Stan in Lembo

Featured Photo: Man on rocks at the Toronto Beach || f/5.3 || 2s || ISO1250 || 185 mm || Nikon D7200 || 2024

Year-long project : Edition 4.0

As usual, let me start as far away from the main subject as I can, you know for the sake of clarity. For the past couple of years in my “physics in english” class student arriving in their junior year (classe de première, or the old grade 11) I have a bit of a project that they work on over the coming year.

I like the idea of having an overall theme and having the groups work on various aspects and sort of teach each other the rest over the course of the year. I have to say, at the risk of sounding like i’m patting myself on the back ( which incidentally I love doing), it has gone very very well. If you seek proofs check out the Physics Bytes ! podcast or if I ever get aroudn to fixing it up look on the left menu and you’ll see it.

Thus far the three “seasons” have been

1. Colonizing the moon : wherein they had to work all the various aspects necessary if we were to colonise the moon, getting there, habitation, energy/industry, food/water/oxygen, human biology/psychology
2. Carbon Emissions : we looked at the 7 major secteors when it comes to carbon emissions (energy, agriculture, transport,indusry, buildings, waste, internet) to try and understand the sources of emissiosn and what future there is for reducing them in each
3. Future energies : looking at the major sources of energy production (as well energy storage and carbon capture) and looked to see the state of affairs and revolutionary technologies lay in the future of each

Each and every year despite my worrying that the rsults will be on good (for lack of time adn they fact that they have much more and more improtant subjects to work on) less than good, adn every single time I hae been absolutely blown away by their work. Their presentations (entirely in english), the podcast episode on the topic, and the poster that they do for finishing the year.

This year I decided to do something that i’ve been wanting to do for many years :

A summer reading gone awry

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence : SETI. I will probably go into it at some later time, because one month away from the start of the school year and i’ve yet to finalise the structure of the programme, but that is of secondary importance here.

Nevertheless, as part of the preparatory work for the project (and because I feel like I have a pretty good and hardworking group this year) I decided to give them a bit of summer reading to get them in the right state of mind.

• obligatory :
  • Contact by Carl Sagan, one of my absolute favourites and references for good science fictoion as well as for me one of the defintitive HardSF books on the question of contact with ETI.
  • His master’s voice by Stanislaw Lem. Lem has been a favourite of mine ever since reading The Futurological Congress and then a good portion of the rest of his catalogue, and I like his viewpoints on potential contact: it is intelligent, funny, thought out and very different from the optimistic tone of many others, Sagan included.
• Optional :
  • Remembrance of Earth’s past trilogy by Cixin Liu. Blew my mind the scope of that trilogie, and it was quite a revelation to find another poitn of view that is very much pessimistic but in an intelligent way (and a different one from Lem) on the potential of contact.

In hindsight I was ambitioius optimistic out of my goddamn mind. Not only in terms of quantity (these are french 16 year olds having to read in english!! ) but also the quality. While Sagan is quite straight forward, Lem is not. Far too convoluted and parenthetical with layers of infolding and self reflexion before actually getting to the point which is never what you think it is. Lem for me is often an arena for thinking more than any form of straight forward narrative, the self reflexion and constant meditation on the meta aspects of the narrative is a feature, not a bug. That is a big part of what we love about Lem and why he endures.

Suffice it to say I regret having given His Master’s Voice as their summer reading…

Surprising Scarcity !

… All the more since i’d never read it before myself ! While i’ve read a good portion of his work, he is nevertheless prolific and some of his works are more well known than others, and more easy to come across randomly.

And so i set about going to my old haunts (c.f. next section for a nostalgic but sincere rant) looking for His Master’s Voice. Seekers, nope nothing. Alright, let’s check ABC books, nope nothing there too. BMV for sure then … nada.

So I could understand if finding His master’s voice, specifically, was difficult; it’s certainly not Solaris or The Cyberiad, which are more well known in popular culture, but still … ! What was indeed the true surprise, was that there was nothing by Lem … anywhere. I must have visited at least 7 used bookshops in Toronto this summer and not a single title by Lem was to be found in-store anywhere! And then I had to ask, and i got the same answer

Not only you will have a very hard time finding used books by Lem on the market, when you do find it, it’s gone within 48 hours, and for 4 to 5 times the price of a similar book, even in a less-than-great state.

This was all the more surprising given that i had built up my collection over time back in the day, because i was able to easily find them in second-hand bookstores. When i spoke the fellow at Seekers he told me that it’s been like this for the past few years now; no doubt a combination of very few of his books being in print anymore, and it becoming a sort of a niche bit of reading amongst those still frequenting used book stores.

And of course, at each turn i was told to just look online for it, and when i do find it, to hang on to it. But, i just can’t get myself to settle for that without havign exhausted other avenues.

So the summer reading …. ?

I didnt manage to find a physical copy of “His master’s voice” and so had to look for it on the internet, and found it as an ebook, which i’m reading. I will look for it again when i’m back at paris, perhaps i’ll have more luck there. The sellers all told me to look on internet, and if i find it to hang on to it. I hate shopping for books - or at least these types of books - online. Feels wrong. It’s stupid i know.

As for the book itself … Oh boy, i think the kids are going to have a lot of trouble with it, if they even get to it!