Journey to the Center of the Mind
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE MIND
My first science fiction books were the ones I got from Scholastic Books at school. The teacher would pass out the flyers and we would pour though the listings. Even the kids who didn’t order books liked to look at the flyer.
As a child in the early 70s, the Scholastic Books flyer was my main source of book news. I would fill in the order form, checking the boxes of all the books I wanted, and Mom would sign it and enclose a check without ever saying I had chosen too many. She was a reader too.
It was a happy day at St. Aloysius Elementary when the books finally arrived. The teacher would have the box of books on her desk and she would call our names one at a time. It felt so good to walk back to my desk with an armful of brand new books.
The most memorable was Journey to the Center of the Earth. I got bored and did not finish it, but the cover image of three men on a raft plunging into a fiery abyss is burned into my memory.
In retrospect, I can see that I preferred journeys through time. The Time Machine came to epitomize the type of science fiction story I liked. A Wrinkle in Time was more suited to my age, but I did not appreciate the supernatural element.
Of course this is how you find out what you like.
Once I had to write a story in class and I wrote about a boy who stowed away on a rocket to the moon. He got stranded there and he ran out of air. As he gasped his last breath, he awoke safe and sound in his own bed. It had all been a dream.
I thought I made the story up, but it turns out I was remembering the premise of Lester Del Ray’s Marooned on Mars – another book I never finished. I must have only read the beginning of that book because my story went in a very different direction indeed.
Adventure didn’t interest me. Neither did technology. I liked my science soft and I was drawn to stories that evoked philosophical wonder. Yet for all that, what I remember most clearly is the fiery cover of Journey to the Center of the Earth – abridged and edited for children.