Introducations

I'm Billie Aul, the talking half of aulsmith. Tim's and my library is just the sf/f and sf-related books in our collection. We wanted to stop buying duplicates every time we went to Flights of Fantasy. Tim and I live in Albany in a house that seemed large until our book collection expanded to fill it. We've now weeded all the duplicates and have managed to get most of the books off the floor. We are sometimes members of LASTSFA and members of the Alternate Universe. Tim is involved in conlanging and I write sf/f short stories from time to time.

Heya. I'm Deb Atwood (my account is shared by my husband Kevin Allen, but he just logs books here). I'm slowly working on getting all our books in, and hope to get everything, including the kids' stuff in. We have a lot of duplicates and I'm hoping that logging things will help me weed those out and give them away (except for the poor sad romance novel we have had over a dozen of somehow and even giving them away as party favors hasn't seemed to reduce the numbers).

The husband is the current president of LASTSFA (this is what he gets for missing elections). I write, when I can, and I'm also an avid gamer.

Oh, right - I guess introductions are in order.

I grew up here, and then wound up going to college here, and - somewhat to my surprise - staying here after college.

I'm not especially active in local fandom - I've met a couple of LASTFA folks over the years (I went to college with one, too...) - but I have been to several Albacons, in various cities. (Billie, we have acquaintances in common from my college-radio days.)

However, ever since I was a kid and started a book-a-day reading habit, I've had a hard time keeping enough reading material on hand to stay ahead of my reading - so I've laid in a stockpile of books that by now really should see me out. (My town had NO bookstores, and we were limited to weekly visits by the Bookmobile - so after I exhausted my school library, running out of reading matter was a real danger.)

One day back in the 'eighties - in the part of my life after I obtained steady employment, but before parenthood - it occurred to me that the SF paperbacks of my youth were both readily findable and still affordable.

I also realized that these conditions would not obtain forever: so I systematically scoured used bookstores for the Ace Doubles and for the yellow-spined DAWs. (This was in those dark days BEFORE internet shopping, remember....)

So I woke up one day and realized that I was a collector. So I now look in on the local convention now and then.

Hi, I'm Jeremy Goldstein. I guess I'm here because I got the invite from Billie, despite being relatively new to the area, and across the border at that. I have not yet attended Albacon, although I hope to if my schedule allows this year. I regularly attend Boskone and Readercon (where I remember seeing Asyouknowbob on a librarything panel).

Anyway, I'm a librarian/techie in Pittsfield, I collect far more comics and s.f. books than I will ever have the time to read, especially because I've been squandering my time on gaming lately.