Scholastic Book Clubs and Terran Trade Authorities (Hobby Origins, Continued...)

Preschool exposure to Star Wars and comic books started me on the path to nerdom.  Public school, particularly the school library, showed me I didn't walk this path alone.

Yes, nearly every little boy in the USA of 1982-83 had a few Kenner Star Wars figures in the toy box, but it was easy to spot those of us who were a lot more "into" the fantastical.  My best school chum Zack later became my favorite GM, and now is a published author of multiple horror novels.  Although we met at the bus stop on the first day of Kindergarten, I first marked him as a kindred geek spirit when he grabbed the Tusken Raider jigsaw puzzle during 1st Grade arts and crafts time.

A brilliant young boy named Colin shared Mrs. P.'s 1st Grade class with us, and he stood out for more than just his nerd interests.  Colin could already read.  Time may distort my memories, but I recall that while the rest of us struggled with our basic vocabulary, Colin got to sit quietly reading alone.  Not only that, he could bring and read the material of his choosing; that meant comic books!

Of course I was drawn to Colin's comics like a moth to flame, and he graciously shared his mags.  Colin inspired my lifelong preference for Iron Man (before he was cool!) over all other superheroes, except maybe ROM; the armored Avenger was Colin's favorite and hence the books he most frequently brought.

It was Colin who first pointed out the ad for Star Frontiers in one of these comics, and he who explained "it's a game."  I was blown away: a game you say?  He pointed out the blurb "from the makers of Dungeons and Dragons" gracing the same ad, offering "yeah, a game like D&D."  Later he brought in an example of this mysterious "D&D", probably a module, but only this wunderkind could understand this slim volume packed with text and esoteric diagrams.  Or maybe I misremember, and he only described it.  Regardless, it was beyond the comprehension of anyone but Colin.  We were only 1st Graders after all.        

Sadly I lost touch with Colin over the years but he taught me that far more worlds than just George Lucas' approved licenses exist, and that while glossy images drew us in, the written word held the key to accessing these worlds.

The school library quickly became a favorite place, where I discovered my first (quasi-) games in the Choose Your Own Adventure books and inspiration in the folklore and paranormal books that seemed to saturate school libraries in the early 80s.  Remember the Scholastic Book Club, and the order forms you could take home to show your folks?  My parents frequently denied me toys "you have too many already", but rarely said no to Book Order requests.  It didn't matter that I always picked the bullshit books about UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Ghosts, or even some CYOA nonsense.  Reading was educational!

Soon I discovered the public library in my rural hometown held an even wider array of CYOA books in the juvenile section, including the imitators like Which-Way and even better the TSR  Endless Quest books which claimed some sort of direct connection to those unfathomable games Colin tried to show us.

My parents reasoned no place in town was safer than the public library, so I found myself there many days after school, lost among the books.  The "grown up" library had many of the same colorfully illustrated books on weird subjects, and others in even larger format.  It was here I discovered probably the most influential works on my hobby aesthetic: Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority books.

I checked out the TTA books repeatedly, marveling at the illustrations through 1st and 2nd grade,   later absorbing the narrative of the Proxima Wars and other Great Space Battles as my reading skills increased.  The books (just the first two in Cowley's series) disappeared, obviously stolen, sometime in my early elementary school days.  Searching through the stacks, hoping the TTA handbooks had simply been misplaced, I discovered many new fantastic books, such as the Target Doctor Who novelizations, and the Usborne World Of... series.

A sympathetic librarian aided my mission to find the TTA books, teaching me to use the microfiche records of neighboring libraries' collections (pre-internet kids!).  Inter-library loan requests reunited me with the first two TTA books, and finally allowed me to read SpaceWreck (I would not see Starliners until buying it in college).

The TTA handbooks shaped my ideas of spaceflight more than any other influence, and were doubtless among the most important books of my childhood, an importance felt even in their absence.  The disappearance of the TTA handbooks left me yearning for spaceship imagery, a yearning that had me recall those ads from Colin's comic books… but that’s the next chapter in my self-indulgent story.