There was a point at which I would have been embarrassed by some of the books on my shelf. A lot of these books were forgotten and in storage through various moves until we bought our first house. Then they were being unpacked and put onto shelves, and there were a few moments of “…really?” But I couldn’t force myself to let go of them.
To be fair, I’ve had moments in adulthood, also. After grad school, my wife and I were visiting a local book store. I walked out with both Tolstoy and a Batman novel. I read Batman first.
If we rewind back to the 80’s, when I was growing up during an amazing time and when one of my parents loved science fiction, I ended up with several novelizations of series that interested me on my shelf. Some of them transitioned from my to-read pile directly into storage, having never been read, but many of them hold fond memories. An example is a series of X-Men novels that I collected as diligently as I collected the comics, the difference being that I never seemed to find the time to read the novels.
Once they were on the shelf and visible again, though, some nostalgia took over. A few years ago, I pulled one of the X-Men novels off the shelf and dug into it. These aren’t exactly heavy reads, and they finish quickly. Of course, I managed to read one and the rest have been sitting on my shelf through two moves since then, but…I will get back to them. Really.
One of my interests in the 80’s was Photon. For the uninitiated, this was a game that was essentially the same as Lazer Tag, but with different branding and a much different, less sleek and refined look than Laser Tag. Think Star Wars instead of Star Trek. While I probably could have talked my parents into paying for a set (had I ever been able to find a set near where I grew up), none of my friends had a set, which made it sort of pointless. Add to this the fact that there were no Photon game centers near where I grew up, and Photon was something about which I dreamed of experiencing but never realized.
Side note: When we moved to New England, I discovered a few Laser Tag arenas in the area, and I was able to finally realize my dream of playing in one. Bucket list item achieved.
Something else that differentiated Photon from Lazer Tag, other than the aesthetic, was a short-lived series that imagined a world built around the game set in outer space. That series was, even by 80’s standards, painfully campy and low-budget, but the concepts for the characters were actually interesting, and what the series couldn’t pull off, a series of novels took a good try at achieving.
Penned (under a pseudonym) by Peter David, a writer famous for his run on the Incredible Hulk, these novels were everything that was amazing about the 80’s. There was Photon, of course, but characters that included a ninja princess, a cyborg wizard, and many others, including, of course, a sort of Everyman character, Bhodi Li, with whom every middle school boy reading could relate.
I read the first four novels (and a separate, YA novel that never developed into a series), because talking my parents into buying a $2.99 paperback every few weeks was trivial compared to other wants. The adventures that my imagination was able to have as I was drawn into this world! I distinctly remember reading one of them on a bus as we returned from a class trip.
What’s most compelling about this memory is that book four ended on a cliffhanger. I could barely recall the plots of the others, but vividly remember the cliffhanger, because I was never able to find the fifth novel. Somewhere in my mind, all the way through adulthood, that un-resolved plot thread was stored in the background, because when I was un-packing boxes of books as we moved into our current home and I found my old Photon novels, I immediately remembered that cliffhanger.
Last Christmas, I was debating what to purchase with some gift cards that I had received and my wandering eyes fell on those novels, which sat on a shelf to one side of my office. I suddenly had to find resolution to that plot, so I went searching. After some online sleuthing, I found it…book 5, albeit not in the best condition, but it existed and was for sale nonetheless. Nowhere that I could spend the gift card, but it didn’t matter. One click and a week of waiting for delivery later, it was in my hand.
Lest we take it for granted, dear reader, the Internet can be a wonderful thing.
I spent a few weeks going back and re-reading the rest of the series first, to lead up to the cliffhanger, and then reverently picked the newly acquired book 5 up from my to-read pile (where it had skipped several other books and been placed on the top). I made short work of it, and reached the final chapter with a broad smile at the happy ending that the characters realized.
40 years later, I found out the end of the story. I know what happened. That plot has closure.
Yes, I am a hopeless geek, and there are so many other more important things upon which I could spend my time and energy. But now that I know the end of the story…a story from a better and simpler time…I couldn’t be happier.
