Nobody, darnit

I went to Village Books to pick up birthday presents for hawkdancer and my dad. I got Toby Bishop/lmarley's Airs Beneath the Moon for Jess, and for my dad, John Scalzi's Old Man's War. I started Old Man's War at the bus stop, and on the third page, it made me want to cry. Now, if you know me, that's a damn hard thing to do. Third page!

The clerk got realy excited at my buying the Scalzi book. "I was just telling someone about that! Do you know if he has any other books we could order? I'm trying to bulk up our science fiction section." Well, I think they had all of them, but mentioned that I was hoping to get Alan Dean Foster's latest book. Apparently, Foster is best-known for his media tie-ins, but I grew up with just the opposite impression, since my dad owns like everything the guy's written, except the tie-ins. (Splinter of the Mind's Eye being the exception. My first Star Wars book. :-)
He asked me the title, and I struggled to remember. "Salmagunda?" something like that. I said that if they had the latest issue of Asimov's, I could find out, since I'd just read the review there.
This also got the guy excited. "I told them they should get the Foundation series!" Well, no, that's not what I was talking about. He ended up writing down the names of the three magazines I told him -- Asimov's, Analog and F+SF. I probably should have mentioned others, but I suspect half the ones I did would be online ones, since I can never keep them straight. :-(

So perhaps I have done my small part in enriching the SF section of Village Books. It is small, but they do a good job stocking local authors. And, they've got a nice big shelf dedicated to new authors.