Modern science is rarely dull and there’s usually a fascinating story behind each new discovery. This was the formula that fuelled the Scientific Book Club for more than five decades.

With a new title released each month, the Scientific Book Club covered a broad range of topics from geology to marine life and fossil fuels to extra sensory perception. Put some science on your shelf. This fabulous cover (pictured at top) is just one of the many titles featured.

A couple more images from the AbeBooks’ Hackathon which concluded earlier today at the University of Victoria with a series of presentations from the hackers. Excellent work all round (a true 24-hour effort) and true innovation too.

Good luck to all the contestants and I will have update on Saturday evening, along with some more photos. Anyone on the UVic campus this weekend should look for the bright red t-shirts worn by competitors and AbeBooks staff who are present to help out.

A number of AbeBooks engineers and developers are on hand – Tim, Cliff, Adam, Zach, Jonathan and Eric.

Here are a few snaps from the start.

while a scientist at heart, Sagan even ventured into fiction with a novel called Contact. Discover the books of this pioneering writer.

Henceforth known as Bradbury landing, the site unnamed until its official dedication and naming yesterday, which would have been Bradbury’s 92nd birthday.

All of this points, to me, to things being right with the world (and to the fact that if there was ever a time to buy a copy of The Martian Chronicles signed by Ray Bradbury, it’s now). Somewhere, I like to think Mr. Bradbury is very pleased by this turn of events.

One of the authors who is most in demand (from looking at the current numbers) is Poul Anderson. Man, he has some great covers (one at left).

I’ll let the Singularity & Co. folks better explain the project in their own words:

Our Big Idea is a simple one, but we think it’s pretty great.

We love books. A lot. And we love sci-fi books, new and old. But mostly old.

And there are a lot of great old sci-fi books out there that are out of print, out of circulation, and, worst of all, not available in any sort of digital format.

Given the subject material, that’s just not right.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to open a bookshop, both online and and in real life, in Brooklyn, NY where we live and work. It doesn’t have to make much money. It doesn’t have to make any money at all, since our day jobs cover our rent.

But what it will do is let us choose one great out of print work of classic and/or obscure sci-fi a month, track down the people that hold the copyright (if they are still around), and publish that work online and on all the major digital book platforms for little or no cost. Every month on this website visitors will get to vote on the next great but not so well remembered work we will rescue from the obscurity of the past.

We’re going to take some of the greatest works of imagination of the 20th Century, and bring them into the 21st, and you can help, by subscribing today!

While many proponents of physical books and traditional cover art feel threatened and marginalized by the building change, others are curious and intrigued, and excited to try their hand at being part of the new reality – that is, the undeniable fact that electronic books are here to stay as a part of our culture now. I for one welcome both, and believe there is room for both. The world is full of readers – not only those who read just for the content, the words, ideas, information and stories, who are content to have e-books without any of the frills, but also those who need the full sensory experience of touch, smell and art in order to be fully satisfied with a book. There is room for both, a demand for both, and it will be interesting to see how designers rise to meet the challenge of keeping books beautiful and cover art relevant when covers, in some circumstances, are no longer strictly necessary.

I thought this quote from the article worded my own feelings eloquently:

“Book designer Carin Goldberg remembers when she would sit in her room as a teenage girl listening to Joni Mitchell, holding the record in her arms. Since then she has designed hundreds of covers—among them are the 1986 edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, books by Kurt Vonnegut, and Madonna’s first record. The cover ‘functions as an emotional visual touchstone,’ Goldberg says. ‘It’s still something that we will always visualize in our heads as what that book looked like. It definitely becomes part of the experience.’”

Because after all, reading is a pleasure as often as a necessity – sometimes beauty and decoration and stimulation is reason enough for existence, for creation.

At the 2012 California Antiquarian Book Fair we met up with the International Printing Museum and they demonstrated how an old style printing press works. This miniature colonial-style printing press was actually made in 1976 but is a replica of what Benjamin Franklin would have used.

The cell-like living area described in the story sounds like a modern home:

Imagine if you can a small room, hexagonal in shape like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no musical instruments, and yet this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk – that is all the furniture. And in the armchair sits a woman, Vashti, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

Here is another excerpt:

The round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her. ‘Kuno, what is it, dearest boy?’ ‘I want to see you not through the Machine,’ said Kuno. ‘I want to speak to you not through the Machine. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I want you to pay me a visit, so that we can meet face-to-face.’ “

FaceTime on the Ipad anyone?

E.M Forster will be forever associated with A Passage to India, Howard’s End and A Room With a View, but The Machine Stops is an important story in science fiction circles. He was an expert on detailing issues of class, race and sex, but he also understood how the world was going to evolve even though he wrote under gaslight and took a horse and carriage to meetings with this publisher.

Some people will love this. Classical music can be a wonderful companion to a good book. Myself, I nearly always read in complete silence at the end of the day. I have one exception. Back around 2000, I read Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor and put Massive Attack’s Mezzanine album on a continuous loop while I was reading.

Mezzanine (which I also recommend) is dark and threatening electronica, and perfectly accompanies Stalingrad where Beevor describes one of the most brutal of all World War II battles. Beevor’s account of the conditions endured by the city’s residents should be read by everyone. I finished the book and thought ‘How did this happen?’

Just think, if you are reading Jaws by Peter Benchley on your ereader you can have John Williams’ legendary movie soundtrack playing as the Great White takes a chunk out of a swimmer.