Cars are mechanical extensions to our bodies, allowing us to travel widely. Humans can not flap their arms and fly like a bird, but airplanes take us where no bird can fly. These are special purpose machines. Computers are general purpose machines programmed to aid us in doing special purpose tasks. Right now, SciFan is about as useful as a bicycle for getting around in a big city, better than walking, but far from driving a Camry.

NASA was launching Gemini spacecraft when I started buying science fiction. I'd walk down to the shopping center and twirl a rack of paperbacks in the drugstore. I'd have ten or twelve titles to choose from among the mysteries, westerns and other genres. Later on, with bicycle power I could travel more widely, and discovered new and used bookstores. About this time I discovered the out of print problem. The conundrum of all bookworms.

Everyone has heard the phrase, "first edition". Well, most books only have first editions. They get printed once and are quickly forgotten. Books loved by readers get reprinted with varying degrees of frequency. The specific task I'm talking about in this essay is the problem of locating books that are out of print. It's a matter of logistics and statistics. Until recently, it hasn't been a challenge for applied computational power.

During the computer bulletin board system (BBS) days, I fantasized about starting a business were I built a database and people could dial into my system to search for used books. I did not pursue that dream, but sometime after the internet got big, I found Advanced Book Exchange. Essentially, they were doing what I had been daydreaming about. ABE is a clearing house for used book dealers and mail order catalog dealers. Booksellers pay a fee and list books. Buyers search the database and find books for sale. When I first discovered the site, they had a few hundred sellers. Now they have five thousand dealers from all over the world. The Advance Book Exchange is the Star Trek matter transporter of finding out of print books.

The Advanced Book Exchange is applied computational power and turns me into SUPER-BOOK-WORM. With a few clicks and a bit of mousing around, I'm flying around the world, and in an instant of time, I've checked thousands of book dealers. Titles that have been on my list for years were found in a snap. Now, whenever I hear about an out of print book I want, I jump on ABE, and nearly always find my book. My only holdout is PHOENIX by Lady Dorothy Mills, 1926. What could be closer to perfect?

Well, I've just discovered Ebay, the big auction website. Ebay is not better than ABE at finding books, but it does have one very nice advantage. Sellers can showcase each item with web page graphics. This is true on ABE, but it's not common. Every evening I cruise the old pulp magazine section on Ebay. It's a jumble of offerings, and it's time consuming to surf, but it is a lot of fun to see those old pulp covers. So what could be better?

Now, I'm moving into the realm of fantasy. Let's imagine a perfect out of print book buying system--total applied computational power. When hunting down a title, I generally assume the problem is one of logistics. For the most part, I can assume that anything I'm looking for is for sale somewhere in the world, or else in somebody's garage or attic. The key is to link the person searching for an item with the location of the item and the person who might be willing to sell it.

By the way, this whole scheme should work for any kind of collectable, like records, or antique scientific instruments or stamps or coins or art. But for now, let's visualize on pulp magazines. What if a group of pulp collectors got together and created a specialized ABE database for pulps. First, they could start with a structure, like listing every pulp magazine, and every issue, and start building information about that issue to help buyers make their choice. This would define the world of pulp collecting. Look at this Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase link to get an idea of the order I'm talking about. [Sometimes requires two tries to reach.]

Now imagine wanting the August, 1939 issue of ASTOUNDING, a very historical SF magazine. Wouldn't it be great to jump to the page about that issue and find a list of everyone in the world who is selling a copy? Or if no one was selling, to leave a message saying I want to buy a copy. What could be better?

One of the neat things about Ebay is it's the ideal form of a garage sale. You dig through your house and find stuff to sell. You hop on Ebay and list your items, and then wait to see who in the world will be willing to pay what for them. The trouble with Ebay is it is way too much reading and clicking to find items you want. If you know the exact title you can do a search, but if you only have a vague notion, like a subject, it's almost impossible to find things. Like I stumbled onto a volume of letters by Kipling and Haggard. I didn't know it even existed.

If every collectable had an ordering system, it would greatly enhance the searching for items. If Ebay listed books by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification systems, you would have far more power in finding what you wanted.

Back to our pulp buying service. Once the concept of selling online becomes universal, imagine what this means. Say your grandfather dies and you are cleaning out his attic. You find boxes and boxes of pulp magazines. Tragically, for decades, most children will just toss these well loved items out thinking who would possibly want them. Or, they will toss them out because it will be too difficult to find a buyer.

In our imagined perfect online selling system, these people can just check for where pulps are listed, and look up each issue they have and post a message to start the bidding. A week or ten days latter, they can close the bids, collect the money and ship the mags.

Collectors could even list their holdings online, either publicly, or privately, so other collectors can make offers to trade or buy. With applied computational power, it would be possible to know about the location of every August, 1939 issue of ASTOUNDING.

Not to get too far out, but think of the implications. I can't really imagine all the ramifications, but I can think of some silly ones. Picture a future where people have lists of what they own and what they want to own in databases. Think of the dating services you could build around that? I once met a woman who collected Garfields, the cartoon cat. She had over 5,000 items. I asked her if she got on the internet and met a man with 5,000 different Garfield items would she be interested in him romantically. She said it would be tempting. Marriages used to be arranged for social and economic benefits, now they can be arranged for improving collectible collections.

Seriously, though, is this the ultimate solution for the reader who wants to be able to read anything he finds a reference to? I don't think so. The ultimate will be when the old books and magazines are scanned and put online. Imagine having a printer that could print a good reproduction of a pulp magazine. I could start reading with April, 1926 issue of AMAZING and relive the history of SF in the order it was printed.

The ultimate ultimate would be a Star Trek replicator for any collectable, but that IS outside the realm of applied computational power.