I didn’t go to the secondhand book fair on Fullarton Road today.  I didn’t buy the following books.  And I give my reasons why I didn’t buy each on

 

I didn’t buy this 1975 disaster novel for a buck, written as it is by the guy who a couple of years later did the first real climate change novel (cli-fi as it’s now called) ‘Heat’.  Definitely didn’t buy this because of the whole ‘earthquake’ thing like Icequake and that British one.i I can’t remember the title of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t buy this collection of short stories about ecological devastation, published in 1973, which in no way connects to my fascination with that late 60s/early 70s sense of ‘oh fuck’.  Nope, didn’t buy this, even though it was only a buck.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s really good that I didn’t buy those two, because then I’d have had momentum towards buying this volume on Australian Science Fiction, published in 1982.

and amidst all of that, if I had bought those three, I’d have felt compelled (despite its lurid cover) to buy a novel, published in 1970, by Marge Piercy (author of the brilliant Vida, Body of Glass and Gone to Soldiers) about doomed radicals.  I mean, it was only a buck, but I resisted, oh yes.

And having resisted all those purchases, it took every ounce of willpower not to buy a famous Australian proletarian novel – one which I am only aware of because of very smart commenters on the Conversation, also for a buck….

and having not bought those, it was relatively easy to not buy two Parker novels for two bucks each.  So I won’t get to read more adventures of a fantastically amoral killer, books.  So, dodged some bullets, eh?