I was probably 12 or 13 years old, and I went virtually every day to the three rotating wire paperback book racks in the small rural town in Virginia where I lived, to see if there were any new books. The library burnt to the ground forty years earlier, and had never been replaced, so that was my library. Even though I knew that the books on the racks were only changed once a month, I’d still go every day just in case something new had arrived. And I literally checked out everything. And I found a very cheaply assembled anthology of Beat writing, which I bought and took home and hid from my mother, because I could see from the content that she wouldn’t approve of it. So I started reading the Beats out of this rather badly assembled little anthology. And I really couldn’t make head nor tail out of most of it. But then I hit their excerpts from Naked Lunch, which made no sense to me at all. Like reading messages from Mars. But I could sense that it was in part built out of science fiction.

Gibson is active on social media. I love how people keep tweeting at him that there is an early manuscript of Neuromancer for sale on AbeBooks for $25,000 / approx £16,680. He’s not in the least bit interested.

This oddly named science fiction book has quite a legacy. Ralph 124C 41+ was written by Hugo Gernsback and published in 12 parts in Modern Electrics Magazine, starting in April 1911. It was published as a book in 1925 (see above) with black and white illustrations drawn by the famous science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul. The title is a play on words – 1 2 4 C 4 1 as in “One to foresee for one.”

The general opinion seems to be that the novel accurately predicts many technological advances but Gernback’s writing is very poor. It predicts solar energy, television, transcontinental air travel and radar. It also predicts many technologies that did not come to reality. The likes of Brian Aldiss and Lester del Rey have panned the book.

Hugo Gernsback was an inventor, a writer and an early pioneer of radio and broadcasting. He arguably launched science fiction as we know it by founding Amazing Stories magazine in 1926 – the first periodical dedicated to science fiction.

This would be a great present for science fiction fans. A two-volume box set called American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, published by The Library of America.

The 1950s was the golden age for American science fiction and this collection contains works by Robert Heinlein, Richard Matheson, James Blish and Alfred Bester. The books cover many key themes from time travel (Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time) to post-apocalyptic survival (Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow) and also human identity in a technological age (Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human ). This box set  captures a period of writing that established many important narratives that are cornerstones of the genre today.

Spotted at Book Patrol. For further reading, we have a little HG Wells, some Isaac Asimov, a touch of JG Ballard, a dollop of post-apocalyptic fiction and a tribute to Ray Bradbury,

NASA has announced that the Mars Curiosity landing site is to be called Bradbury Landing in honour of science fiction legend Ray Bradbury. Of course, The Martian Chronicles are one of Bradbury’s most famous works.

Curiosity’s Twitter account said: “In tribute, I dedicate my landing spot on Mars to you, Ray Bradbury. Greetings from Bradbury Landing!”

Curiosity landed on Mars on 6 August and 22 August would have been Bradbury’s 92 birthday. I’m sure he would have been thrilled.

(Picture courtesy of NASA)