I'm Bud Foote, and this is a course in science fiction. Why would we study science fiction outside of the fact that it's fun? I think there are several reasons, but I need to make some distinctions. Science fiction has labored for a long time under the disadvantage of being somewhat out of its time. Both science fiction and the detective story operate out of an essentially 18th century posture, which is this.
No matter how difficult the problem, no matter how baffling the case, human intellect is capable of dealing with it. If not now, later.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. Fred, I wasn't ready. You turned the mics on too soon.
Sorry, you need a minute?
Nah. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with everybody-- Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, Cody Turner, and a guest to be named shortly. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.
Our show today is called "The Science Fiction Lounge." It's the second part of our Georgia Tech Library guidebook. Should we call it a chapter? How are guidebooks usually divided? CHARLIE BENNETT: Sections, maybe.
Say locales, sites. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, I like sites. Sites, that's a pun I can get behind, Fred.
On the first Friday of each month, we'll visit another site in the guidebook and talk about a space or service in the Georgia Tech Library.
Today's site is the science fiction lounge on the first floor of the Crosland Tower. And our guest is the science fiction subject specialist for the Georgia Tech Library.
And our songs today are about lounging, looking into the future, and going deep into space. CHARLIE BENNETT: Space sure is deep. Oh, are you going to play "Hawkwind"? I think that's a given.
Nice.
But let's start now with a track by the original rock and roll spaceman himself, recorded at a time when he was just beginning to embrace a nascent space-age character he'd portray on stage. This is, "Oh, You Pretty Things," by David Bowie in space, right here on Lost in the Stacks, 'Bowie in space'.
I think he's on Earth for this song.
[DAVID BOWIE, "OH, YOU PRETTY THINGS"]
That was, "Oh, You Pretty Things," by David Bowie. And our show today on WREK Atlanta is, it's not the "Georgia Tech Library Guidebook," It's the science fiction lounge.
It is. You should definitely say the right one, not what I wrote in the script.
OK. It's the science fiction lounge.
I love how Marlee says lounge. It makes up for how she just does not want to say guidebook. The "GT Library Guidebook" is, every first Friday of each month, we'll have another site from the guidebook-- I'm glad we figured that one out-- featuring a space or service in the GT Library.
And our guide today is Matt Frizzell, the assessment librarian for the Georgia Tech Library. Along with his primary role of supporting evidence-based decision making at the library-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That's a big deal. --he is also our subject specialist for science fiction. Matt, welcome back to the show.
Welcome. It's great to be here. Again, I am the subject specialist for science fiction studies. That's probably my lesser role, but the one I enjoy the most. Hopefully, none of my bosses are listening.
They're all at that conference.
We played them the show that you were on. I don't know what was it, a couple of months ago where you talked about assessment.
OK. So that counterbalances it.
Right. Yeah.
OK. Hopefully, I didn't say anything in that one. CHARLIE BENNETT: Why is it more fun? And I know there's a lot of really obvious reasons, but why is it more fun for you it to be science fiction? So this is something that I've been into since I was a child. I think as a lot of us, whatever genre-- literature or music or whatever your jam is. And my jam is science fiction and fantasy, since I was eight years old and could read something other than run, spot. Run. So doing this isn't work.
I do this anyway for fun when I get to meet authors that I look up to or even I haven't even read before and get turned on to, it's terrific. It's really fun. And I enjoy sharing it with campus and all the students and other faculty I meet. So yeah, it's not work. It's a lot of--
It's lounging.
It's a lot of lounging.
Oh, nice. You've almost revitalized my pleasure in our profession. Almost.
I'm glad I could almost do that. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, that was good. So the show the show is called "The Science Fiction Lounge," and I think just for a form's sake, we should start with that location. Can you describe the science fiction lounge in the Georgia Tech library? Yeah. So first off, we have science fiction books and memorabilia in three different places, which can be a little bit confusing. One is the archives. So we have a huge collection.
It's called the Bud Foote collection, who is a professor at Georgia Tech who really started the trend or history of science fiction here. And his collection takes up probably, I don't want to say it's like 7,000 books. We have 12,000 in the archives. Those you can't check out. But if you go to the archives, you can see a lot of cool first editions, signed editions, stuff like that. We also have a lot of books for checkout at our Library Service Center.
And if you go online and you're looking for a book and it says, Library Service Center, you have to request it. Those are there, and you can't really browse them. Today, we're talking about the sci-fi lounge, and that is where you can browse, you can pick them up, you can read the blurbs on them, look at the crazy '80s cover art and have a chuckle at that.
But that is on the first floor of the Croslin Library building, that's the tall one, right as you come in to your left from that main entrance. Now, we're in the process of moving books back. So if you head over there and don't see anything, just wait maybe a week or so, and we'll have books back in the space. When the we have the chilled water outage, we had to move stuff off for safety. But we have a collection of around 3,000 books in that space. And yeah, it's a great area.
You got some little nooks, some of those pod chairs you can sit in. They're open and browse and read a little bit.
Say what the pod chairs are a little bit more.
So those are, if you've been in that area of the library, if you look from the back, they just look like white eggs. They're very space sci-fi ish, and they're almost always taken. But yeah, they're cool, little pods where you sit in them, and you're almost completely enveloped. So check them out.
They're like one of those '60s chairs, where you imagine it swivels around, and James Bond meets his villain-- the head villain.
I think I saw them in 2001, actually, in the Moon Base sequence. There's some chairs that look just like those egg chairs.
Yeah, they're very futuristic, so they definitely fit with the theme.
Also, looks like the ship from Mork and Mindy.
A little bit, yeah.
I was going to make that reference, but I figured none of our listeners would get it.
I'm 50, I get that reference. Let's do it.
This is such a Gen X show today. I don't know why. We're almost out of time for this segment, but I definitely want to hit on those numbers you said earlier. So 12,000 books in the archives collection, 3,000 in the science fiction lounge. I've heard that you have to choose which particular books go in the lounge, though.
Yeah, so we rotate them a bit, things from popular reading, which is another collection we have in the Price Gilbert building we move over into the lounge. But yeah, so newer books and more highly circulated, checked-out books go in the sci-fi lounge.
This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll be back with more from Matt Frizzell, science fiction subject specialist, after a music set.
And you can file that set under NK2635.F53A272. So much in that set.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) Fall in love. Falling in love with you.
That was, "Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space," by Spiritualized. And before that, "Space Cowboy," by Eve Saint James. Loungy songs about lounging in outer space.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called "The Science Fiction Lounge." It's another episode for our "GT Library Guidebook."
Our guest is Matt Frizzell, the assessment librarian and subject specialist for science fiction at the Georgia Tech Library. So assessment librarian, we did a show about that before. We're concentrating on subject specialist for science fiction. What does that mean exactly? What's your job?
So it involves a few different things. One of them is I select titles for our collection. If you have something that you would like us to purchase, we have an area on our website. I don't know what page it's on, but it's in there.
You can search purchase request on the website, and something pops up that's useful.
Or contact me directly, and we'll try to do that if it's something appropriate.
That actually sounds pretty fun, though, picking out sci-fi books--
Oh, yeah.
--to get on the shelf.
It's like, oh, yeah, I want to read this. I think people will do this. This one just won an award, but I don't know if I really want to read it, but somebody will. CHARLIE BENNETT: Some of our listeners might be imagining you on a large bookseller's website clicking on things. How do you do the purchasing? So actually, there's a couple of different vendors, but their website is kind of arcane. It's not like Amazon. It's kind of annoying process. You have to check if it's in stock.
Is it in stock at which warehouse? What edition is it? Do we already have a copy? Do we have an older copy? What shape is that copy in. Is it dog eared and in bad shape? Should we get another one? Things like that. So ordering books is a bit of a process. It's more work than just going to Amazon.
Just clicking, yeah.
Do you go down to the sci-fi lounge and look at a particular copy of a book to see if it's still circulatable or if it's beat up?
Yeah, definitely. Sometimes. For example, when Dune came out, I was like, I know this is going to be hot here. And went down and looked and we had a couple of copies from the '90s that were paperback, and they were just completely mauled. So I ordered a couple more hardcover copies and took those out of circulation. But yeah, definitely. If I know something is going to be popular or I think that it's high circulating, I'll go check that out.
And are you doing just books? Are you doing movies too, like graphic novels? I'm sure there's a lot of other science fiction venues at this point.
Really, right now, I'm only doing the books. I've done some graphic novels, but the way we have the responsibilities divided at the library, it makes it confusing when you have multiple people ordering in the same genre. So yeah, but that's all part of sci-fi. So we, at the library, have a lot of sci-fi DVDs. We have a lot of sci-fi and related graphic novels. So it's all there.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you ever have to buy something that you don't personally like, but you know is important for the collection? Yeah. Or I know that it's a popular book. There's a book--
You don't have to name any names.
I'm not going to name them. I was just thinking that in my head. I don't want to get on the bad side of this author. But it was made into a very popular-- it's like Amazon or Netflix-- TV series.
Cody, start googling right now. Figure out what--
But won a lot of major awards, and I could barely get through it. And I don't know if I just got turned off by something early on in it, but I'm going to try to go back and reread it because everybody is like, this is terrific. I'm like, I know we need it, but I can't. I have trouble with this one.
I love it.
So we have this great collection for folks in the community of users of the Georgia Tech Library to read and access. And then there's more in the archives that are kind of rare stuff. How do you promote it to the community? Not every academic library has something like this.
So we have somebody within our archives department at the library who manages a science fiction collection. Her name is Allison Reynolds, and she's really terrific. She does a great job as buying a lot of cool, older stuff. We just got a copy of-- I can't remember the name of it, but a original HG Wells novel. We have either original or close to original, copy of Dracula, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So yeah, we have somebody that manages that.
And what was the rest of your question?
Well, promoting it. I mean, do you have authors come in?
Yeah. So that's one of the coolest things I get to do. And I work with our public programming librarian, Catherine Mancini, and she does a terrific job. She does a lot of work to make all this stuff happen. And I just help out and help select who we're going to bring. But we try to, every semester, bring either an author, a group of authors to speak at Georgia Tech. We had a couple of years ago, Charlie Jane Anders here, who's a big name in science fiction.
We just recently had a program with a bunch of Atlanta authors called Space Funk. It's an anthology that they're doing, and they did readings and spoke to the members of the audience one on one or in small group settings for a long period of time. So if you want to be able to listen to these authors, possibly meet these authors, it's a great opportunity. And we're doing this stuff all the time. So we try to promote it, but also, check the Library's Events page.
Is the lounge a venue for this stuff also, or is that separate?
So we use the area outside the lounge, those steps that you'll see if you come in the first floor of Crossland. But also, the main area we do it in, those programming events is the scholars event network. That may or may not mean anything to you, but it's the big room also on the first floor of the library. If you go past popular reading, it's on the left as you walk past that toward Clough.
This is Lost in the Stacks, and we're going to hear more about science fiction and its place at the Georgia Tech Library on the left side of the hour.
I heard that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Jeffrey Schnapp, co-author of The Library Beyond the Book, and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks. WREK, Atlanta.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's show is called "The Science Fiction Lounge." It's the second site in our series, the "GT Library Guidebook." Why talk about science fiction? Aside from the fact that it's fun, as Bud Foote said, at the beginning of the show. Let me read an answer from Kim Stanley Robinson, who appeared on this show in March of 2021. "People sometimes think that science fiction is about predicting the future, but that isn't true.
Since predicting the future is impossible, that would be a high bar for science fiction to have to get over. It would always be failing, and in that sense, it always is failing. But science fiction is more of a modeling exercise or a way of thinking." "Another thing I've been saying for a long time is something slightly different. We're in a science fiction novel now, which we are all co-writing together.
We're all science fiction writers because of a mental habit everybody that has nothing to do with the genre. Instead, it has to do with planning and decision making and how people feel about their life projects." "For example, you have hopes, and then you plan to fulfill them by doing things in the present. That's utopian thinking. Meanwhile, you have middle-of-the-night fears that everything is falling apart, that it's not going to work, and that's dystopian thinking.
So there's nothing special going on in science fiction thinking. It's something that we're all doing all the time." File this set under PS374.S35F66.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That was "Watcher of the Skies," by Genesis. Peter Gabriel, Genesis too, way back when. That was a song about looking to the stars to see what the future holds.
This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today, we are speaking with Matt Frizzell, subject specialist for science fiction at the Georgia Tech Library. And speaking of looking to see what the future holds, science fiction, all about the future, what's the future for the science fiction lounge?
So next semester, we may take a hiatus for a semester on our public programming, but we will definitely, in the fall have an author here or authors, so keep an eye out for that. We are moving the books back as we speak or relatively soon. So that'll be happening. If you've been coming by and checking and seeing empty shelves, that was due to a little campus emergency called the chilled water outage. The great chilled water outage of 2024.
I didn't find it great at all.
Well, that's how it'll be referred to in history books, because it was all of campus. But yeah, we had to move a bunch of stuff out of the library. So that's why the stuff is not there right now. But yeah, we have a couple of housekeeping things to do, but hopefully, we'll have some more cool stuff to do. Science fiction community just had its awards season Hugos and Nebula Awards and all those just happened. So if you're looking for good stuff to read, go through those lists.
I always do that and say, I didn't know they had a new book out or whatever. And that's a good place to find some books. CHARLIE BENNETT: I absolutely love that you are a librarian who gets to read all the time for one part of your job. It is so unusual that we get to read a lot for our jobs. Yeah, especially, I think, in academic areas, because we're tangential to that sort of, as librarians. We may have an undergraduate in computer science or mechanical engineering, but--
Or English. Or history.
Yeah, a lot of that as well. But reading those peer-reviewed articles, that can be kind of a slog. It takes a lot of mental effort. And so reading these books, I would be doing it anyway and maybe I'd do it a little bit more vigorously and branch out to stuff I might not read on my own.
A lot of folks unfamiliar with librarianship think that librarians just get to read for pleasure all day for their job. But you actually do it for a little bit.
Yeah. And I can say it's for my job, but It's kind of not. I kind of just do it anyway. But yeah, I'm trying to think of some good books I've read recently that I might toss out to you guys. One of them I would definitely say if you are a fan of the Expanse books, James SA Corey. He/they-- it's actually two authors-- started a new series. I believe it's called The Mercy of Gods or something like that. But it's absolutely terrific. The library has purchased copies. Should be coming in soon.
But I loved reading it.
Do you think about the collection as missing anything that you want to pursue? I mean, the science fiction collection, the circulating science fiction collection, it's got what is good and it's stuff that is popular. But is there an area of collecting that you want to get into?
So there's a whole area of scholarship surrounding science fiction and films and multimedia, in general. The music, the theremin, all John Carpenter's work on all these soundtracks and stuff of that nature that I wish we could branch out more into that, and I think we can. But yeah. And collect some of these articles of things of movies past, especially now with the movie industry being so big in Atlanta.
I think we have a chance to possibly try to get some memorabilia from science fiction movies, things of that nature, and hang on to them. And collect them in a way that whenever we have exhibits or if you want to go see them, you can check them out from our archives or we can display them, things like that. But I think that would be really cool if we could do that and share that with our community.
That feels like the archives collaboration there, because archives is where the stuff lands and libraries where the book stuff goes.
Yeah, and an extension of that is-- and what we're doing in public programming by bringing authors here is building relationships. And this sounds Machiavellian and I don't mean it in that way, but as authors get older and they want to preserve their first drafts, their notes, that napkin that they wrote an idea for a famous book on, that we can be a place that those go. And they can feel comfortable that they'll be preserved, and they'll be shared with the public.
And that's something that we're really hoping to build on. We already do that, but to build on.
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today, we visited "The Science Fiction Lounge" for the "GT Library Guidebook." Our guest today is Matt Frizzell, assessment librarian for the Georgia Tech Library and subject specialist for science fiction. Matt, thanks so much for being on the show.
Thank you guys for having me.
File this set under BL65.D7I56.
[HAWKWIND, "SPACE IS DEEP"]
"Space is Deep," by Hawkwind. That's a song about going way far out into science fiction.
Today's show was called "The Science Fiction Lounge." And on our way to the credits, I just want to ask, what's everybody's favorite science fiction thing? Movie, book, game, band, author, event, whatever. I'm good. And Matt, let's start with you.
My answer is yes. All of it.
Come on. Is there anything that stands out?
I would say, for me, well, yeah, I could go on for a bit, but I'm just going to say Blade Runner.
Nice. I can get behind that. Fred.
I'm not a huge science fiction fan, but I really enjoy the series Futurama, which sometimes references a lot of science fiction stuff, and the references probably go over my head, but that's a top-notch show. CHARLIE BENNETT: That seems legit. Marlee.
Star Wars.
Thud. Done.
Yeah. How about you, Cody?
Mass Effect, I think, was the first time I really got into science fiction, a game series that then expanded into a bunch of books.
I've heard the name, Mass Effect, so many times. I have no idea what it looks like at all.
It's like humans fall into technology they don't understand, and they get thrown into a bunch of politics.
I feel like I've played that game. And I'm going to finish off just by going all the way to my childhood. There's this book, Startide Rising by David Brin, and I got at least one nod in the studio from that one. I have read that book so many times. It's about dolphins and chimps evolving into spacefaring species that then go out into space with humans too, and then they meet aliens. It's so good. OK, roll the credits. All right.
MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. Legal counsel and a napkin with a very strange idea on it were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Looking forward to seeing that in the archives. Special Thanks to Matt for being on the show, to all folks supporting science fiction at Georgia Tech, especially Allison Reynolds and Lisa Yaszek. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.
Next week, we're going to have the episode that we almost lost in the hurricane, three stories of library leadership from the uproar class of 2023.
Right On.
It'll be uproarious.
Fred!
Time for our last song today. And we close with a nostalgic homage to some great science fiction titles of literature and cinema of the past. From the classic, Rocky Horror Picture Show original soundtrack, this is "Science Fiction Double Feature" right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody.
Give everybody a chance to dress up before you start playing that song.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, "SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLE FEATURE"] Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still But he told us--