Ex Libris

by Paula Guran

  Verne’s imagined libraries reflected—with considerable amplification—the luxurious private libraries of the nineteenth century. He describes Captain Nemo’s library aboard the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870):

  Tall, black rosewood bookcases, inlaid with copperwork, held on their wide shelves [twelve thousand] uniformly bound books. [The furnishings included] huge couches upholstered in maroon leather and curved for maximum comfort. Light, movable reading stands, which could be pushed away or pulled near as desired, allowed books to be positioned on them for easy study. In the center stood a huge table covered with pamphlets, among which some newspapers, long out of date, were visible. Electric light flooded this whole harmonious totality, falling from four frosted half globes set in the scrollwork of the ceiling.

  The library also serves as a smoking room and adjoining “lounges” house masterpieces of art and scientific specimens.

  When SF attempts to predict libraries and librarians of the future, the results are widely ranged.

  The Cerebral Library by David H Keller, M.D. (Amazing Stories, May 1931) tells of a mad scientist who devises a way to acquire, store, and electronically access a library of “the entire range of human knowledge.” Not quite the entire range; the database for his library was to be obtained from the brains of five hundred college-educated men (and three librarians) who, over the course of five years of reading, read seven hundred and fifty thousand books.

  After all that reading, their brains were to be surgically removed, stored in glass jars, and wired together. The scientist could then query by typing on a keyboard, and the audio answer would be relayed through a radio. Luckily for the 503 young men, the plot is foiled before their brains are removed.

  Robots are being used these days in some libraries, but nothing like Harry Harrisons’ Filer-model robot librarians in his story “The Robot Who Wanted to Know” (Fantastic Universe, March 1958):

  . . . very little intelligence is needed to shelve books or stamp cards, but this sort of work has long been handled by robots that are little more than wheeled IBM machines. The cataloging of human information has always been an incredibly complex task. The Filer robots were the ones who finally inherited the job. . . . Besides a complete memory, Filer had other attributes that are usually connected to the human brain. Abstract connections for one thing. If it was asked for books on one subject, he could think of related books in other subjects that might be referred to. He could take a suggestion, pyramid it into a category, then produce tactile results in the form of a mountain of books.

  The Galactic Library occupies almost the entire subsurface of eighty-first century Terra in Frank Herbert’s Direct Descent (1980). The library staff of eight thousand is aided by robots. “The first rule of the Galactic Library Code is to obey all direct orders of the government in power.” Preserving the library while still adhering to the Code is a challenge met by clever librarians when governments in power try to destroy it.

  But vast libraries need not take up entire planets. In Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsdawn (1988) colonists travel on spaceships to their new home on the planet Pern. General Cherry Duff, the colony’s official historian and librarian, insists “records of all ethnic written and visual cultures be taken to Pern,” since you never know when “old information will become new, viable and valuable.” Besides, the “whole schmear . . . takes up no space at all on the chips we’ve got.”

  Master Ultan, the blind librarian in The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), the first volume of Gene Wolfe’s four-volume Book of the New Sun, tells us the books of the great library of Nessus, of which he is in charge, come in every conceivable variety including a cube of crystal “no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does.”

  In William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), “cyberspace” is a matrix of networked information that “cowboys” like protagonist Case jack into. His consciousness then navigates the consensual hallucination. The New York City Public Library is mentioned and, although it is not spelled out, one can extrapolate that the general public may need librarians—at least sometimes—to access the network through libraries. One research library also acts as a dead storage area with a human librarian as its guardian.

  In Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, Hiro Protagonist is a freelancer for the Central Intelligence Corporation (CIC), which uploads information to the Library of Congress which has merged with CIC. Hiro gets compensated if someone finds a use for information he has provided to the library. As only one percent of the information in the Library gets used, Hiro doesn’t make much from this, so he also delivers pizza. His “indispensable guide and companion” in the post-internet Metaverse is a virtual librarian:

  The Librarian daemon looks like a pleasant, fiftyish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes, wearing a V-neck sweater over a workshirt. . . . Even though he’s just a piece of software, he has reason to be cheerful; he can move through the nearly infinite stacks of information in the Library with the agility of a spider dancing across a vast web of cross-references. The Librarian is the only piece of CIC software that costs even more than Earth [a geopolitics program]; the only thing he can’t do is think.

  This idealized reference librarian delivers information and makes connections. He is self-programming, but was originally written by “a researcher at the Library of Congress who taught himself how to code.”

  Moa Blue in The Starry Rift (1986) by James Tiptree, Jr., is another ace SF librarian. When two Comeno students visit the Great Central Library of Deneb University—“asking for a selection of Human fact/fiction from the early days of the Federation, “to get the ambiance”—they meet Chief Assistant Librarian Moa Blue, an amphibian. He recommends three stories for them and his “comments” serve as introductions to the three tales. In an epilogue by the students, they express their thanks and hope they can dedicate their paper to him.

  Not all science fictional libraries are useful for the public. In Marc Laidlaw’s The Third Force: A Novel of Gadget (1996)—one of the earliest tie-in novels based on (what was then) a CD-ROM game, Gadget—a totalitarian United States is ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator. It is difficult access anything as identification codes on each book change, and books are constantly rearranged by an automatic retrieval system to insure book locations cannot be memorized. All searches are recorded and reported to the government. Even the chief librarian of the Imperial Library, Elena Hausmann, cannot access everything. Elena, secretly a member of the resistance, considers the library a “crypt for knowledge now. No one can borrow a book without fearing for their lives.”

  In Sean McMullen’s Voices in the Light: Book One of Greatwinter (1994), thirty-ninth century Australia has no electricity; wind engines are leading-edge technology, and steam power is banned by major religions. Zarvorva, the Highliber of Libris (a state library), controls “a network of libraries and librarians scattered over . . . thousands of miles.” The library functions as a government controlling education, communication, and transportation. Since there is no predominant religion in the area, librarians perform rituals and ceremonies in addition to teaching classes, distributing and collecting books, and running communication towers. Zarvorva has reorganized and “modernized” her library. “The changes did not go uncriticized, but the Highliber was dedicated and ruthless. She lobbied, fought duels, and had officials assassinated . . . and even had the more numerate of her opponents abducted for a new and novel workforce.”

  Science fiction has been known to use libraries as literal repositories of all knowledge or metaphors for civilization as a whole. In Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (1951), for instance, post-apocalyptic survivors recover books from libraries to learn skills needed to survive. One character notes: “The most valuable part of our flying start is knowledge. That’s the short cut to save us starting where our ancestors did. We’ve got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about.”

  H
owever, the protagonist later discovers that farming

  . . . is not the kind of thing that is easily learned from books . . . Nor is book-installed knowledge of horse management, daisy work, or slaughterhouse procedure by any means an adequate groundwork for these arts. There are so many points where one cannot break off to consult the relevant chapter. Moreover, the realities persistently present baffling dissimilarities from the simplicities of print.”

  Another attempt to preserve civilization after its downfall with a library is made in A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) by Walter M Miller, Jr. Nuclear war has wiped out most of civilization and those left are hostile to learning and knowledge. Roughly paralleling the historical Dark Ages, the monks gather and preserve what books they can find in order to keep “the spark burning while the world slept.”

  Ken Scholes’ Psalms of Isaak series (first book: Lamentation, 2009) posits a far-future post-apocalyptic civilization in which the Androfrancine Order has assembled a Great Library in the city Windwir. The order is devoted to the preservation and promulgation of knowledge obtained mostly from archaeological digs. The city and (almost) all in it are destroyed. But as the series continues, it is discovered that the books were also stored, at least partially, in the memory of Isaak, a steam-powered android called a mechoservitor. He and human supporters start collecting whatever books still remain and reestablishing the library.

  Neither knowledge nor libraries are always honored and preserved in science fictional futures. In the year AD802701 of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), libraries have been abandoned. An enormous library is described where nothing is left but useless “decaying vestiges of books.”

  Isherwood Williams, the protagonist of George Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949), feels libraries offer a store of “the wisdom by which civilization had been built, and could be rebuilt.” He realizes people must learn how to read tries to instruct the new generation. But, with the exception of his youngest son, Joey, the younger folks are uninterested. The protagonist eventually abandons the notion civilization as he knew it will ever be rebuilt and, instead of reading, teaches them skills they need to survive.

  . . . and that is merely a sampling of fantastic and science fictional librarians and libraries. I’ve touched on a few titles intended for younger readers, but not really considered books specifically for children, let alone film, TV, gaming, and other media. You’ll find plenty more there.

  As for the contents of this anthology . . .

  Let’s start by finding out what it is like to be raised by feral librarians.

  Paula Guran

  National Science Fiction Day 2017

  In the House of the Seven Librarians

  Ellen Klages

  Once upon a time, the Carnegie Library sat on a wooded bluff on the east side of town: red brick and fieldstone, with turrets and broad windows facing the trees. Inside, green glass-shaded lamps cast warm yellow light onto oak tables ringed with spindle-backed chairs.

  The floors were wood, except in the foyer, where they were pale beige marble. The loudest sounds were the ticking of the clock and the quiet, rhythmic thwack of a rubber stamp on a pasteboard card.

  It was a cozy, orderly place.

  Through twelve presidents and two world wars, the elms and maples grew tall outside the deep bay windows. Children leapt from Peter Pan to Oliver Twist and off to college, replaced at Story Hour by their younger brothers, cousins, daughters.

  Then the library board—men in suits, serious men, men of money—met and cast their votes for progress. A new library, with fluorescent lights, much better for the children’s eyes. Picture windows, automated systems, ergonomic plastic chairs. The town approved the levy, and the new library was built across town, convenient to the community center and the mall.

  Some books were boxed and trundled down Broad Street, many others stamped DISCARD and left where they were, for a book sale in the fall. Interns from the university used the latest technology to transfer the cumbersome old card file and all the records onto floppy disks and microfiche. Progress, progress, progress.

  The Ralph P. Mossberger Library (named after the local philanthropist and car dealer who had written the largest check) opened on a drizzly morning in late April. Everyone attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and stayed for the speeches, because there would be cake after.

  Everyone except the seven librarians from the Carnegie Library on the bluff across town.

  Quietly, without a fuss (they were librarians, after all), while the town looked toward the future, they bought supplies: loose tea and English biscuits, packets of Bird’s pudding, and cans of beef barley soup. They rearranged some of the shelves, brought in a few comfortable armchairs, nice china and teapots, a couch, towels for the shower, and some small braided rugs.

  Then they locked the door behind them.

  Each morning they woke and went about their chores. They shelved and stamped and catalogued, and in the evenings, every night, they read by lamplight.

  Perhaps, for a while, some citizens remembered the old library, with the warm nostalgia of a favorite childhood toy that had disappeared one summer, never seen again. Others assumed it had been torn down long ago.

  And so a year went by, then two, or perhaps a great many more. Inside, time had ceased to matter. Grass and brambles grew thick and tall around the fieldstone steps, and trees arched overhead as the forest folded itself around them like a cloak.

  Inside, the seven librarians lived, quiet and content.

  Until the day they found the baby.

  Librarians are guardians of books. They help others along their paths, offering keys to help unlock the doors of knowledge. But these seven had become a closed circle, no one to guide, no new minds to open onto worlds of possibility. They kept busy, tidying orderly shelves and mending barely frayed bindings with stiff netting and glue, and began to bicker among themselves.

  Ruth and Edith had been up half the night, arguing about whether or not subway tokens (of which there were half a dozen in the Lost and Found box) could be used to cast the I Ching. And so Blythe was on the stepstool in the 299s, reshelving the volume of hexagrams, when she heard the knock.

  Odd, she thought. It’s been some time since we’ve had visitors.

  She tugged futilely at her shapeless cardigan as she clambered off the stool and trotted to the front door, where she stopped abruptly, her hand to her mouth in surprise.

  A wicker basket, its contents covered with a red-checked cloth, as if for a picnic, lay in the wooden box beneath the Book Return chute. A small, cream-colored envelope poked out from one side.

  “How nice!” Blythe said aloud, clapping her hands. She thought of fried chicken and potato salad—of which she was awfully fond—a mason jar of lemonade, perhaps even a cherry pie? She lifted the basket by its round-arched handle. Heavy, for a picnic. But then, there were seven of them. Although Olive just ate like a bird, these days.

  She turned and set it on top of the Circulation Desk, pulling the envelope free.

  “What’s that?” Marian asked, her lips in their accustomed moue of displeasure, as if the basket were an agent of chaos, existing solely to disrupt the tidy array of rubber stamps and file boxes that were her domain.

  “A present,” said Blythe. “I think it might be lunch.”

  Marian frowned. “For you?”

  “I don’t know yet. There’s a note . . . ” Blythe held up the envelope and peered at it. “No,” she said. “It’s addressed to ‘The Librarians. Overdue Books Department.’ ”

  “Well, that would be me,” Marian said curtly. She was the youngest, and wore trouser suits with silk T-shirts. She had once been blond. She reached across the counter, plucked the envelope from Blythe’s plump fingers, and sliced it open it with a filigreed brass stiletto.

  “Hmph,” she said after she’d scanned the contents.

  “It is lunch, isn’t it?” asked Blythe.

  “Hardly.” Marian began to read aloud:

  Thi
s is overdue. Quite a bit, I’m afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I’m sure she’ll be happy there.

  Blythe lifted the edge of the cloth. “Oh my stars!”

  A baby girl with a shock of wire-stiff black hair stared up at her, green eyes wide and curious. She was contentedly chewing on the corner of a blue book, half as big as she was. Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

  “The Rackham illustrations,” Blythe said as she eased the book away from the baby. “That’s a lovely edition.”

  “But when was it checked out?” Marian demanded.

  Blythe opened the cover and pulled the ruled card from the inside pocket. “October 17, 1938,” she said, shaking her head. “Goodness, at two cents a day, that’s . . . ” She shook her head again. Blythe had never been good with figures.

  They made a crib for her in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, displacing acquisition orders, zoning permits, and the instructions for the mimeograph, which they rarely used.

  Ruth consulted Dr. Spock. Edith read Piaget. The two of them peered from text to infant and back again for a good long while before deciding that she was probably about nine months old. They sighed. Too young to read.

  So they fed her cream and let her gum on biscuits, and each of the seven cooed and clucked and tickled her pink toes when they thought the others weren’t looking. Harriet had been the oldest of nine girls, and knew more about babies than she really cared to. She washed and changed the diapers that had been tucked into the basket, and read Goodnight Moon and Pat the Bunny to the little girl, whom she called Polly—short for Polyhymnia, the muse of oratory and sacred song.