THIS IS MATERIAL FROM THE ICE CAVE. IT HAS NOT YET BEEN FORMATTED.
From: "Andy Robertson"
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 16:50:35 +0100
>What's interesting about this copy in particular is that about a dozen
>pages have been marked up in what appears to be middle-schoolish doodling
>and hilighting with one of those cheap, thick ink Bic pens.
You didn't happen to pick it up in Columbine, did you?
Off at a tangent … .
I have sometimes wondered if the stacks of a really slow-moving second hand bookshop would be a good place to hide information, or a good conduit for passing messages … … One of those places with overflowing shelves, no real check on the stock, and a very slow turnover.
Slip a message betwen the leaves of a copy of Addison's essays: and it's unfindable, except to the agent who knows which writer is being used. Or rip the covers off an old bible and nestle your book of unmentionable secrets within, and so leave it for pickup.
(( I love the "atmosphere" of these places: they are absolutely defeated; the Form Destroyer lurks there; all those books, vanishing, unloved.
Do you have them in the USA? Outside of the old East Coast cities? ))
From: Davide Mana
Forgetting there's not only Yanks and Brits on this list (;>) the Glove Cleaner writes…
To which Rain Crow Lee replies….
The subject is relevant to both DG tradecraft (Andy's idea of used bookstores as a slow-medium for transmitting confidential messages will be promptly set to good use) and as fiction/scenario reference, so let me add a note of local colour.
In Italy - remember, the nation in the Industrial West with the lowest rate of book reading, mainly due to the high price of printed matter - used book stores are the exception, and what you get - normally in the University district of most major cities - is the used books stall - in the indigenous lingo, 'le bancarelle' (yep, 'the small stalls').
The 'bancarella' [incidentally, also the name of a coveted book award] is a box-like market-stall, built in wood or iron, and resting on wheels that never rolled, in a nicely exposed area on the sidewalk or on a small square. Roll-down shutters seal it up after hours, turning it into a sort of anonymous cube. When the trade is on, a single stall can expand to occupy twice its volume.
Alternatively, in some cities (Turin, for instance) used book stalls are built directly into hollow supporting pillars of covered sidewalks.
The specific stall is generally identified by the first name of the owner, and often stalls specialize in one subject; for instance, along the wall of the Philosophy Dept. (Via Po, Turin) you get Philosophy/History, then Humanities in general, then a stall specializing in Art edition, then Literature and Fiction, a huge stall filled with Performing arts and Cinema books, and finally a Comics/Genre Fiction specialist, all in one short block (let's say less than one hundred meters). On the other side of the road you get Arts/Architecture and Special Edition/Antiques/Prints, both housed in hollow pillars.
Books are normally offered at half the cover price, but special offers (three paperbacks for 5000 lire, e.g.) or swaps are also frequent.
Searching for a single book can be a true safari - booksellers will either point you to the right stall or start digging through piles of volumes in display looking for your prey.
The entire process is highly social - it all happens in the open and people idling nearby have to be book-lovers (everyone else just hurries by), so that impromptu alliances are struck to track down certain elusive texts, or fiery discussion start and draw through afternoon hours about the merits or defects of an author or novel.
Such places (used book markets would be a proper description but is never used hereabouts) get particularly suggestive in winter, when the thick Turin fog shrouds the streets and a yellow lamp of some sort marks each stall.
Booksellers dress like sherpa or polar explorers, and wear trademark fingerless wool gloves. They normally have some kind of contract with a nearby cafe, that on the hour sends out a waiter to collect orders for hot coffee and pastries (or Turin's fabled 'bicerin' - a hot coffee and chocolate mix with whipped cream dressing).
As it can be gleaned from the above, I spent a consistent slice of my life hanging around used book stalls, book-hunting still being one of my favourite pleasures. Those institutions have stocked my shelves for ages when the days of thin cows were here, and still provide many useful surprises today.
The idea of using such sources of fun as a turning point in a DG game or story is greatly welcome.
I hope the above was not just a waste of electrons, and someone will find it useful.
From: "Andy Robertson"
Fascinating! We have nothing like them. The colder and wetter northern climate would turn such an openair bootstall into a mass of solid pulp, I fear. And the colder and wetter Northern temper does not countenance people reading books over one's shoulder, nor swapping notes in pursuit of the novel one has been searching for for years.
However we *are* getting damn'd American *innovations* in the form of large bookseller chains like Borders, who try to turn their stores into coffee rooms … . I don't think too much of this: but the idea of a collective of small booksellers setting up something like what you have described, under a common roof, is intriguing.
— --
Ever heard of Hay-on-Wye?
It's a very small town in Wales where the main industry is second-hand bookshops (and the tourists they bring). There is a literary festival once a year. People make up parties to go there for the weekend to "do" the shops and feast in the restaurants. (guilty, m'lud)
It's not very sinister, but one imagines …… For example, I can think of no better way to temporarily "lose" a book than to give it to a Friendly book dealer in this town, and ask him to put it in his "miscellaneous stock". Hide a tree in the forest!
<quote>
HAY CINEMA BOOKSHOP. (Inc. FRANCIS EDWARDS). The Old Cinema, Castle Street, Hay-on-Wye, via Hereford HR3 5DF Tel: (01497) 820071. Fax: 821900. E.MAIL: ku.oc.nomed.sdrawdesicnarf|selas#ku.oc.nomed.sdrawdesicnarf|selas. Hay-on-Wye's converted cinema carries a running stock of 200,000 Secondhand Books on all subjects.
</quote>
Here's the official Home Page. There's loads more about the place available to a casual web search, if anyone wants to set up a scenario there … .
From: "Andy Robertson"
Books?
What are these *books* you speak of? Are they some kind of television
accessory? Are they collectibles? Can I get one on eBay?
I can't do a thing right tonight.
Books, I assume, you will find. But do you have the dead air, that has not been stirred for decades? The sad volumes that no-one has looked at for half a lifetime, that were once a present to a loved child or spouse?
The festering, *beaten*, ideas, the losers, crammed together in a junk pile, and the peculiar hopelessness that surrounds them?
Remember where Y'Golnac first manifested? As the proprietor of such a bookstore, unless I misremember me.
From: SuperDave
Subject: DG: Re: Second Hand Bookshops ?
Books, I assume, you will find. But do you have the dead air, that has not
been stirred for decades? The sad volumes that no-one has looked at for
half a lifetime, that were once a present to a loved child or spouse?
The festering, *beaten*, ideas, the losers, crammed together in a junk
pile, and the peculiar hopelessness that surrounds them?
Very good, oh Glove Cleaner.
As a haunter of used bookstores, I have encountered this species from time to time. The bookstores where you wish you had brought along a dust mask, where you nearly despair at the sight of cheap paperback romances stacked in the same pile with classics and SF, shoved into the corner of a stairwell because the place is CHOKED with books, so you have to do Twister-style body contortions to get down an aisle without knocking over piles of yellow-paged, crumbling volumes, wondering whther the Fire Marshall is taking a bribe or just ingoring the place, knowing full well you'll come out of this shop absolutely filthy with dust, and spiderwebs in your hair, and maybe, just MAYBE, some priceless gem that costs you a mere 50 cents, with a mysterious birthday message or an old peeling Science Fiction Bookclub nameplate on the inside cover and smears of crushed silverfish every few pages.
On the other hand, I've been in some very nice, airy ones too. Some of them are barely used bookstores anymore, however, instead dealing primarily in large lots of remaindered books (if I remember the term correctly) which are technically new, but sold for half price. You rarely find any real gems there, and because these shops are reasonably organized, after a few weeks of going there, they hold no surprises for you. But as they tend to have amiable cats wandering around that one can pick up and stroke while searching the shelves, they are still a pleasure to explore, and they often give store credit for your used books.
Remember where Y'Golnac first manifested? As the proprietor of such a
bookstore, unless I misremember me.
My players first encountered him as the proprietor of a porno shop—an even more "defeated" sort of bookstore.
From: "Andy Robertson"
Really nice anecdote David!
Some years ago I came across a find that made me grind my teeth in
frustration… <snip>
Horrors.
Still, what I was thinking about - don't laugh - was the bleak "spiritual" atmosphere of these shops.
And what about ordinary libraries, ordinary bookshops - what about any great and ancient collection of knowledge.
I've frequented the Bodelian, at Oxford. Is it just an illusion I suffer, or is there really some sort of "atmosphere" about such places?
((A shadow of the Great Library of Yith))
Is it conceivable that such places have some real mental/telepathic effect on people - morphic resonance, memetic focussing?
— --
And what about bookshops, libraries, in the Dreamlands? I know they are an important part of my own "dreamspace", the dream-country I still visit occasionally.
From: "Andy Robertson"
One other thing that the old fashioned bookstores have in common; at
least one cat. Perhaps somewhere is the stacks, way in the back arownd a
corner that no one turns there is a gate to the Dreamlands that they
guard only allowing the rare worthy admittance??
I think that's a lovely idea! Maybe too kindly for Delta Green - but truely in the spirit of Dunsany, on whose work the Dreamlands stuff is based.
The "gate" should surely lead into a bookshop, (an echo of the real-world bookshop), in the Dreamlands - full of such scarcely - glimpsed volumes as would drive a waking bibliophile mad with delight,or terror!
And perhaps an agent would be tasked to find certain information in such a bookshop … to read one such book, and remember certain critical passages, by whatever means skilled dreamers employ (as the Lizard King once said, look at your hands… )
From: The Man in Black
The "gate" should surely lead into a bookshop, (an echo of the real-world
bookshop), in the Dreamlands - full of such scarcely - glimpsed volumes as
would drive a waking bibliophile mad with delight,or terror!
Stealing a page (sic) from Neil Gaiman, I would say that books in the dreamlands bookshop are books that people want to or have wanted to write, but never did, or books that people have dreamed about reading/writing.
From: "Louise Hayes"
The "gate" should surely lead into a bookshop, (an echo of the real-world
bookshop), in the Dreamlands - full of such scarcely - glimpsed volumes as
would drive a waking bibliophile mad with delight,or terror!
See also 'The Library of Babel', also the title of a work of fiction by Jorge Luis Borges.
The library is infinite series of hexagonal rooms connected by short hallways (from which stairs lead up and down to the other levels). Within the library every book imaginable can found and all of the variations of said book also.
As you left each room via the doorway to the hall, the first thing you would see is a mirror or rather your reflection and the reflection of the library - literally a reflection of _your_ library.