Re:M John Harrison becomes first science fiction author to w...
by lproven on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @06:38AM
(#50452219)
> Il be generous and give you the entire six hours for six novels.
If you think that is "generous" then you underestimate the levels of focus a teenager (with a young, elastic bladder) can have. Do you know any teenagers?
:-D
> Even at a relatively low page count of 250 pages each novel
I just turned 59 this weekend. When I was a kit, books were shorter. Often much shorter. A typical paperback SF novel in the 1970s was under 200pp and typically somewhere around 150-175.
There was a reason for those binge sessions: my family was preparing to leave Nigeria forever, and it took nearly 2 months to do all the paperwork. We lived in the Mainland Hotel in Lagos (it's still there) and my dad had a friend who was a member of the Lagos Yacht Club. Its private library had a very good SF section, but only members could borrow books... So I had to read as much as I could while we were there as guests on Sunday afternoons.
Cue manic hyper-fixated focus.
One of the ones I read in those visits was Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Still a favourite, nearly half a century later.
> it would mean you read more than 4 pages a minute, for six hours straight.
No problem.
I tore through them as fast as possible, then went back through them in my memory over the following week. Favourites, ones I really enjoyed, like the Clement, some Jack Vance books, some Silverberg, some Sturgeon, I went back and reread.
My greatest "feat" was probably totally forgetting my summer holiday reading a few years later, at school in the Isle of Man. We were reminded on the first day of term. I read all of Joseph Conrad's Victory that night, starting as soon as I got home from school at about 6PM, finishing about 9:30PM, writing a report in the next hour, and then sleeping.
If you think that is "generous" then you underestimate the levels of focus a teenager (with a young, elastic bladder) can have. Do you know any teenagers?
:-D
> Even at a relatively low page count of 250 pages each novel
I just turned 59 this weekend. When I was a kit, books were shorter. Often much shorter. A typical paperback SF novel in the 1970s was under 200pp and typically somewhere around 150-175.
There was a reason for those binge sessions: my family was preparing to leave Nigeria forever, and it took nearly 2 months to do all the paperwork. We lived in the Mainland Hotel in Lagos (it's still there) and my dad had a friend who was a member of the Lagos Yacht Club. Its private library had a very good SF section, but only members could borrow books... So I had to read as much as I could while we were there as guests on Sunday afternoons.
Cue manic hyper-fixated focus.
One of the ones I read in those visits was Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Still a favourite, nearly half a century later.
> it would mean you read more than 4 pages a minute, for six hours straight.
No problem.
I tore through them as fast as possible, then went back through them in my memory over the following week. Favourites, ones I really enjoyed, like the Clement, some Jack Vance books, some Silverberg, some Sturgeon, I went back and reread.
My greatest "feat" was probably totally forgetting my summer holiday reading a few years later, at school in the Isle of Man. We were reminded on the first day of term. I read all of Joseph Conrad's Victory that night, starting as soon as I got home from school at about 6PM, finishing about 9:30PM, writing a report in the next hour, and then sleeping.
I got a B+.
No, not skimming.