Hey, a not too bad Wednesday

[altivo]

I can tell it's midsummer, when Wednesday isn't so painful. I think it's because I get out of work and it's still light out. Weather was beautiful today too. Not hot, not real windy, just pleasant.

I've been thinking on and off for a couple of years about a series of books I read as a kid that featured a domestic type cat who went into space with his human. He had a space suit and everything, and was named "Flyball." I particularly liked the book where they visited Venus because it turned out that Venus had intelligent plants. The plants were telepathic, and one of them helped Flyball to communicate with his space pilot friend. The author was Ruthven Todd, an academic type who mostly wrote and wrote about poetry. The three books were called Space Cat (1952,) Space Cat Visits Venus (1955,) and Space Cat Meets Mars (1957.)

Normally such things are fairly easy to obtain in libraryland, even when they've been out of print for 50 years as these have been. In fact, I thought we had one of them in our own library, but evidently not. (Or at least, not any more.) Imagine my surprise to learn that only 41 libraries in the US are listed as owning the first book, and only two still have the third. No one owns up to having the Venus story, my favorite of the three. Used copies (most of them former library holdings, with markings to prove it) are available on the used book market for prices in the $25 to $200 range. While I'd enjoy reading these again, I'm not THAT eager to obtain them. I'd have paid $5 apiece, maybe. But the book market, especially out of print books, is a strange and unpredictable beast. We have a book of knitting patterns in the library, called Pacific Coast Highway and written by noted knitwear designer Alice Starmore. Not one of her better works in my opinion, the designs are rather pedestrian. The colors are bland, and she is noted for her brilliant use of colors taken from nature. Perhaps because the book is so blah, it has never been reprinted and is scarce. Used copies sell for $200 and up, mostly because Starmore's name is on them. We receive neverending requests to send this book out on interlibrary loan to places as far away as Alaska or Maine. We used to send it until we realized that it really is very scarce. Some day it won't come back. So we finally stopped sending it outside our own consortium, but the requests for it just keep rolling in.

I suspect no one would lend me Ruthven Todd's books either, for the same reason. Oh well, there's always Eleanor Cameron. Of course, her books are not as good in my opinion, but they are easier to get. Or else Ellen MacGregor's character, Miss Pickerell, the spinster schoolteacher who accidentally ends up on a space ship bound for Mars...

Comments

[cozycabbage.livejournal.com]

By the way, are you "ALT-i-vo" or "alt-EE-vo"?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Accent on the penultimate. That's why it's usually shortened to just 'Tivo (which has nothing to do with television recording gadgets.)

To hear the name in use, see the Dreamworks animated feature The Road to El Dorado.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Space cat? Sounds like something the guy in the street opposite will one day be arrested for selling. :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The only "mind expanding substance" in those books is a plant from Venus called "pyxis" that concurs telepathic abilities when in contact with your skin. ;p

[neo-the-foxtaur.livejournal.com]

Hi Mr Clyesdale. I have heard of space cat, funny thing was it was actually in a museum for speaking about the 50's era of space culture. (since it was in a NASA exhibit). I wouldn't reading about it myself, seems fascinating. Take care in the meantime

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If I find I'm wrong and the books are still available somewhere, I'll post about it here or in furryreaders.

[neo-the-foxtaur.livejournal.com]

Thanks Mrs Clyesdale. Hope onto AIM

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not as scarce as I thought. The 41 library figure is for a particular 1991 reprint. The original edition is still around in many more libraries. Here's a listing of all four titles, with reviews, at Google books.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

I just searched ebay for "space cat" -garfield or space+cat+ruthven and got quite a few hits, mostly in the $10-$20 range (depending on shipping, 'cause I'm guessing it's showing me the UK rates). There's even a first edition or two.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not as scarce as I first thought, but not as common as I'd expect it to be either. These were highly recommended books in their time, but of course as scientific knowledge about Mars, Venus and the moon increased they became "not believable" to kids and lost popularity. Moon mice? Talking plants? ;p

There are still more copies in libraries than I had thought, too. Turns out there were multiple editions and I missed some, so I'll see about getting hold of the books that way. I'm trying to curtail spending, because I am very much afraid the economy is heading for a major disaster in the US, thanks to Bush's war and skyrocketing prices for everything under the sun.

[hrrunka]

It's interesting to see how speculative books often drop out of circulation once their particular speculations have been shown to be false. I wonder, would Space Cat and its sequels still be on the shelves if they'd been set in a purely fictional solar system?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

They might, though I suspect it's more likely that they were killed off by a decline of interest in that sort of fiction generally. Speaking as a librarian, kids in the 8-12 age group who would have been the target of Todd's books are reading other stuff now. Harry Potter is an exception rather than the rule. Puerile jokes like Captain Underpants books, television spinoffs like Hanna Montana, and things derived from Japanese anime and electronic games seem to get the most attention among books of that length. A few are reading longer, more involved materials of course, but most who read at all are focused on short books in the 50 to 100 page range.

[hrrunka]

I've only encountered Captain Underpants books in the hands of a six-year-old, and he only had them because he'd bought them as a bundle at a knock-down price with his own pocket money...

I'd have hoped that one of the things the Harry Potter doorstops would have done was give kids the idea that longer books might be worth attempting. Oh well.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

At least here in the US, attention span in both children and adults is becoming an issue. I blame television.

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

>We have a book of knitting patterns in the library, called Pacific Coast Highway

Never read it, but I did see the film version.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*tailswats*

[luperion.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Global Books in Print?

www.globalbooksinprint.com

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No, but I've tried several large used book clearinghouses that I regularly use for work. The books are available, they are just overpriced for what they are.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

The books you mention would be perfect for print-on-demand, if some firm or individual were willing to do it. Of course there would be copyright issues, but that could be overcome. Manufacturing costs would be low because there's no need to print 500 copies at once. Sure, book collectors would rather have a copy of the original edition, but if the point is just to read and enjoy, a one-off copy printed to order would be perfect.

Sorry for the rambling... we're getting into print-on-demand at work, and it looks like it'll work pretty well for some things such as our large print stuff.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Copyright issues could be major. The author died in 1978. Locating whoever has the current rights under US law could be a costly deal.

My experiences with print on demand, though the quality of the end product is certainly good enough, are that a hundred page book rarely comes in for less than $20 retail. Used copies of these can still be had for near that price, so it's probably not that viable... yet.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

That does sound like an odd series of books,
I was picture more of a Commander Kitty style storyline, or a cat piloting a freighter...which is what I'd be doing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's more like one of those stories where the animal is smarter than the human but has to find ways to communicate what he knows. You'd probably enjoy the books, and they even have decent illustrations. Turns out I was partly wrong about availability. Space Cat was reprinted in 1991. All four are still readily available from many libraries in the US.

These are what we call "chapter books" because they have more text than pictures, not just pictures with a few words. They are written for kids in the 10-12 age group, so they do involve complex ideas and are quite readable.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

"written for kids in the 10-12 age group"

Oh cripes it's going to be a few evenings with a dictionary for me to work that lot out.