Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2012 November 07 • Wednesday

Our internet connection has been down for the last week or so. Hurricane Sandy didn't cause us any damage, not even loss of electricity, so we're very grateful that we got off so easily.

We now resume our regular updates. Whatever I would have posted in the last week has been uploaded now.

The presence of a science-fiction bookstore is a sign of a city's good health, or so I've always thought. There was one in Harvard Square when I was growing up, then there wasn't, then there was again and then it moved to Central Square, where it remains. (I'm talking about Pandemonium Books and Games. I can't remember the name of the one I went to when I was a kid, but it was upstairs, above the Wursthaus, which has also disappeared.)

As far as I know, there hasn't been a science-fiction bookshop in New York City for a while. But now there's Singularity & Co.

It's a publishing venture first, rescuing obscure titles from obscurity and releasing them as ebooks. I have practically no interest in ebooks but my positive experience with Eddie Campbell's iPad app encouraged me to purchase a lifetime subscription to Singularity & Co.'s ebook line.

Fortunately, they have a real shop, too, in Dumbo, a pleasant enclave on the East River in between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

The people running the place were extremely friendly. I was invited to have coffee, make myself comfortable on the couch and even sit and work there for a few hours if I wanted to. A black-and-white movie was playing silently on a large screen. It's a bookstore standing on the verge of being a salon.

But of course the best thing was the books themselves. There are tons of them, all over the place and reasonably priced.

They're mostly sci-fi but other vintage, pulpy stuff is available there too.

Check it out! I plan a return visit soon.