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There is a book sale in my hometown every year put on by the library. I think it started as a way to get rid of all the excess books since the building was starting to fill up. Grinnell has had the historic Stewart Library for years, but it was the size of a large house and was getting too small. I always loved the look of it, since it has a certain castle-like appearance that is very grand alongside the big post office with its pillars. Growing up, my sister and I were always brought to the basement level where there was one room full of young children's story books and another room filled with slightly older children's books like The Jewel Kingdom series and the Monsters of Mythology books. There was also a noisy cockatiel. When you walked in the front door of Stewart Library, you could either go up the stairs or down the stairs, and we pretty much always went down. Going up, there were the adult romances, the computers, the young adult section, the references, and all the rest. This main floor was quite impressive with its grand wooden pillars and a partial second story build out of solid glass and metal. My sister and I barely ever went to the main floor until I was twelve and needed to pick up a book I had heard about that turned out to be in the young adult section. Our world certainly opened up after that.
The book sale that Stewart Library put on was always held in the large basement of the church next door. Tables would be set up and rows upon rows of used books would be set out for purchase with signs indicating the genres. We would spend hours in that basement perusing the choices, mainly in the children's area and the fantasy/science fiction table. This sale is held to this day, even after the new Drake Library was built and all the books moved out of Stewart, which has since been converted into an art gallery with studio space. (Personally I think the new place seems like its trying too hard to look modern while not taking advantage of how much space it has, but for now it is big enough so why complain?) Now, the book sale is a bit smaller and held in the Drake Library conference room. Another tradition that remains is that at a certain time the books are no longer individually priced; you simply pay a few dollars for an entire box of them if you can fill it to the top.
While the book sale was still held in the basement of the church, I made one of my best book discoveries. As I said before, I spend almost all of my time at the fantasy and science fiction table. It was not as big as the others, but I loved to look through the titles one at a time and slowly fill up my box. These were beautiful gems and I was always determined to find the shiniest ones. I still act this way at book sales, thrift shops, and used book stores. Well, I had been going about my search as usual when I needed to go over to my mom for something, or perhaps my sister was calling me. Either way, I ended up walking past the children's book table, which I had not done for a year or two. As I passed, I scanned the table the same way I scanned all the tables as I went by. Westerns and romances do not interest me, and neither do the Christian titles or the nature guides, but I always look them over. There, sitting on the edge of the children's table, was a tall book titled Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. For a moment I just stopped and stared at it. It looked like a book with just lots and lots of different types of aliens in it, illustrated and maybe even described. Such a thing seemed impossible, too wonderful to comprehend. Slowly, I picked up the book, rereading the title over and over.
Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature
- Full-color Identifications -
(Picture found on Google Images)
I flipped through just a page or two before slamming the book shut, and sliding the precious thing into my book box. That felt like one of the greatest days of my life as a middle school student. There were other finds that day, I am sure. However, the book I immediately set to work on reading when we got home was this one. I even wrote my name in it at some point. No one could understand why I was so excited about a book of alien drawings from old books I had never read, so I privately devoured the book, starting with the foreword by author Robert Silverberg and the introduction by writer and illustrator Wayne Douglas Barlowe, who wrote the book with the help of Ian Summers and Beth Meacham. The book features 50 aliens from science fiction literature that have rarely or never been illustrated. (And if they had, the job had been poorly done.) They go in alphabetical order and each creature is given a full page drawing, several paragraphs of information, and a couple side images for further clarification. The source book or short story and its author are also provided. For most of the aliens, there is a section called Physical Characteristics, then one called Habitat, and another called Reproduction or Culture (or both). At the center of the book is a size chart featuring all the aliens save the very largest drawn side by side for comparison. Barlowe drew himself among them to show how they would compare to a full grown human male. The cherry on top at the end of the book is a collection of Barlowe's work from his sketchbook, including not only movement studies for the aliens featured in the book but drawings of fantastic creatures he designed.
Since purchasing this book from the book sale, I still have not read the majority of literature mentioned. At the time I bought it, I had only heard of the Ixchel since I had read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle a few years before. Now, even when I have not read the book, I can usually identify the author. There are the Overlords from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. Larry Niven's Puppeteers from Ringworld are included. A.E. van Vogt wrote The Voyage of the Space Beagle, which features four alien races. Two of these have been drawn many times while the other two almost never have. He chose to create his own depiction of the terrifying Ixtl and try to provide perhaps the first depiction of the Riim. (If you Google the word "Ixtl," lots of variations come up in Images, so you can see why he might have wanted to take a crack at it. The other creatures he did not draw are the Coeurl, a large cat with tentacles, and an impossibly large world-eating cloud.) Other creatures come from great writers like Stanislaw Lem, Isaac Asimov, Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, and John W. Campbell.
(Picture found on Google Images)
Only a couple years ago I discovered that Wayne D. Barlowe illustrated a second book: Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy. The original came out in 1979, and this new one came out in 1996. Of course, I ordered it immediately and slowly worked my way through it. While it is enjoyable, it is unfortunately not as good as the first guide. In the guide to extraterrestrials, the descriptions were completely focused on the aliens. In this second guide, the descriptions have a lot in them about the books the creatures and characters come from. Each creature or character has a full page drawing and a few side images, as in the first one, but the written sections are broken down into The World, History, and Physical Characteristics. The World and History sections feel like you are reading the backs of the novels rather than facts about the creatures. Still, the artwork is beautiful. Once again there are some pages out of Barlowe's sketchbook at the end, and there are even a few creatures mixed in from mythology such as the griffon and the Japanese tengu. Peter S. Beagle's unicorn from The Last Unicorn is drawn very beautifully. Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is drawn more comically than normal. Grendel from the classic epic Beowulf is quite hideous. Other included authors are Edgar Allen Poe, L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit, Terry Pratchett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Roger Zelazny, Lewis Carroll, and Tanith Lee.
