Saturday, October 06, 2007

My Envy Knows No Bounds

Thanks to Kent Morgan for the link.

winnipegsun.com - Winnipeg News - Donation makes fantastic story: "Even the size of a Winnipeg man's science fiction collection pushes the boundaries of reality.

Now Chester Cuthbert wants his collection to enrich young people's minds as it has done with his imagination for decades. He's donating his entire treasure trove of science fiction -- an estimated 60,000 books and magazines compiled since the 1920s -- to the University of Alberta.

'They've provided me with instruction and entertainment,' said Cuthbert, who turns 95 in a couple of weeks.

'It's important to stimulate the imagination. Reading fantastic literature has been a joy to me, and I hope that other people enjoy it too.'

The senior's astonishing accumulation includes periodicals, some of his own published fiction and piles of letters to and from other sci-fi buffs. And virtually all of it had been in boxes stacked in his Mulvey Avenue house.

'You name it, my dad has it,' Raymond Cuthbert, the aficionado's son, said of the collection that started when his father read a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a youth."

4 comments:

Randy Johnson said...

It would be nice to spend a few days-weeks-looking the collection over.

Anonymous said...

I might have to make a pilgrimage to the University of Alberta.

George Kelley

Anonymous said...

I hate journalists: you'd think with the invention of a device even a fat lazy reporter could muster the energy to use and integrate, the digital camera, there would be a picture, or maybe 300, of the collection.

Kent Morgan said...

The Winnipeg Free Press, which is not available on the Internet unless you are a subscriber, also ran a story about the collection. It was illustrated with a photo that showed that the collection is now in boxes that filled the man's garage. I suspect it's being readied for shipment to the U of Alberta. I had heard about this collector and a local used bookshop owner had purchased a few minor items from him about three years ago.