The Month the Library Bought the Future

A starfield with an orbit line and the planet Mars, lit from the upper left, its north polar cap catching the light. A small moon sits on the orbit. — Four Martians in five numbers: the stretch of the September drawer this letter was built around.

In July the library took in twenty-nine books. In August it took in a hundred and eighty-three. In September it took in 381, FL-0213 through FL-0594, written by a hundred and ten people, and more of them were about the future than about anything else.

Science fiction was the biggest shelf the month touched: 138 of the 381 cards. Here is what the busiest days looked like from the accession desk:

1584 Sep

833 Sep

326 Sep

315 Sep

272 Sep

One day did most of it. The fourth of September put 158 books into the drawer, which is more than five Julys, and that day deserves an honest accounting before anything else does.

Two decisions wearing three hundred cards

H. G. Wells accounts for 125 cards in the September drawer, and every one of them was typed on the fourth. That is not 125 volumes chosen one at a time. It is a complete works, broken into its parts and cataloged the way a catalog has to, so that The Time Machine and a story called How Pingwill Was Routed each get a number of their own. Shakespeare accounts for 45 more in the same way, the plays entered singly alongside the collected edition they came from.

So September was not 381 decisions. Wells and Shakespeare are 170 of those cards, a little under half the month, and behind those 170 sit two decisions. Somebody decided to own all of Wells. Somebody decided to own all of Shakespeare. Everything else followed automatically.

A month can look like an avalanche and be, underneath, a very short conversation.

The man who built the furniture

Of Wells’s 125 cards, 37 sit on the Science Fiction shelf, and between them they hold most of the furniture the genre still sits on. The machine that travels in time. The cylinder that falls on a common outside Woking. The island where a doctor carves animals into men. The first men on the Moon.

Most writers who invent one of those spend a career living inside it. Wells invented them in a few years, moved on, and spent the rest of a long life arguing with the world in novels nobody shelves next to the Martians: a draper’s assistant on a secondhand bicycle, a young woman arrested with the suffragettes, a quack tonic that makes a fortune. You cannot see that argument from inside The War of the Worlds. You can see it from inside all of him, and the only way to have all of him is to have the 125.

One coincidence, offered without any claim that it means anything. Wells was born on the twenty-first of September, so the month his complete works entered this library is also the month he entered the world. So, as it happens, was Stephen King, whose two books arrived the same month. The drawer did not know either of those things. The drawer never knows anything.

Four Martians in five numbers

Here is the stretch of the drawer this letter was built around. Five consecutive cards, all typed on the fourth:

FL-0454 · 1898
The War of the Worlds

Mars comes to us. The Martians cross space to take a planet that is not theirs, and walk across Surrey burning everything in their path.
FL-0455
The Wheels of Chance

Not a Martian. A draper’s assistant with ten days of holiday and a bicycle he can barely ride, filed between two invasions because that is where the number fell.
FL-0456 · 2012
The Martian

One astronaut, left behind, growing potatoes and turning survival into an engineering problem.
FL-0457 · 1952
The Martian Way

Settlers on Mars, squeezed by Earth’s politics, go all the way out to Saturn for ice.
FL-0458 · 1950
The Martian Chronicles

We go to them, and this time we are the invasion.

In the order the drawer filed them, Mars is a threat, then a bicycle, then a farm, then a frontier, then a crime scene. Sort them by the year they were written instead and the planet turns over completely in fifty-two years. In 1898 the Martians come for us. By 1950 we are the ones arriving, and Bradbury already knows how that story goes.

Nobody planned a Mars shelf. Four books that agree on nothing landed within five numbers of each other, and a drawer is the only place that would ever show you that.

Whole futures

Wells was not the only author the month bought entire. The whole of Dune arrived across two days: Frank Herbert’s six novels, the sixteen continuations by his son Brian Herbert with Kevin J. Anderson, and then The Science of Dune, a book that means very little on its own and quite a lot sitting at the end of twenty-two others. Nineteen books of Orson Scott Card, five of them written with Aaron Johnston, which is Ender’s war from the first contact to the last shadow. All five books of Dan Simmons’s Hyperion and Endymion. Four of Marko Kloos’s Palladium Wars. Stephen Baxter’s Flood and Ark. And, from outside the genre, twenty-two of Preston and Child and all seven of Harry Potter.

The case against buying this way is obvious. Nobody needs every minor story a prolific man wrote for magazines in 1897, and a shelf that fills with completeness rather than judgment is a warehouse with better lighting.

The case for it is that some futures cannot be read in selections. Dune is the clearest example on the shelf. The first book is a desert and a prophecy, and it takes the next five to show you what the prophecy costs. Owning the first book is owning the question. Owning all of them is owning the answer, including the parts of the answer nobody wanted.

The airlocks September closed

Underneath the complete works, the month spent some of its time going back and closing things the library had left open, and this is the part that will not show up in any count.

The library bought 2001: A Space Odyssey in August and nothing that came after it. In September 2010, 2061 and 3001 arrived, and the Odyssey now reads to its end. Foundation came in at the end of August, Second Foundation and Foundation’s Edge on the first of September, and all seven Foundation novels stand on one shelf.

The Forever War is FL-0002, the second card this library ever typed. Its sequel, Forever Free, arrived in September. FL-0001, the first card, is Robopocalypse. Its sequel, Robogenesis, arrived in September too, and sits 530 cards further down the drawer. Bradbury came into the library in July with Fahrenheit 451 and came back in September with The Martian Chronicles.

And not everything was a rocket. The July letter noted that Pat Barker had arrived with Noonday, the third volume of a trilogy the library did not otherwise own, and called the gap the most useful thing a young collection has. In September Life Class and Toby’s Room arrived. The trilogy reads in order now.

None of that is dramatic. It is the difference between a collection and an accumulation. An accumulation only ever goes forward.

Who drowned

Seventy-six of September’s hundred and ten authors appear exactly once, which means the single-choice habit that built the July drawer was still running the whole time, underneath 170 cards of Wells and Shakespeare. Nobody will notice. That is the cost of a month like this one, and it is a real cost.

Philip K. Dick arrived with The Man in the High Castle. Theodore Sturgeon arrived with More Than Human. Vernor Vinge arrived with A Fire Upon the Deep, Clifford D. Simak with The Visitors, Paolo Bacigalupi with The Windup Girl, Micaiah Johnson with The Space Between Worlds, and Kazuo Ishiguro with Never Let Me Go. Any one of those would have been the story of a quieter month. In this one they are rows in an appendix.

What to read out of all this

Two cards, and both are deliberate corrections.

From the new pile

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro 2006

FL-0560 · Fiction, Science Fiction

From the shelf

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley 1831

A young scientist assembles an eight-foot man from charnel-house parts, watches its yellow eye open, and flees the room, abandoning what he's made.

FL-0006 · Fiction, Science Fiction

From the new pile, the single book that most nearly disappeared under the weight of everything around it. Never Let Me Go is science fiction that never looks up at the sky: an English boarding school, three friends, and a slow understanding of what their lives were designed to provide. It is the quietest book in a month of spaceships, and the one most likely to stay with you.

From the shelf, Frankenstein, which came in during July and which is where the line that ends in 125 Wells cards actually begins. Shelley wrote the first novel that took a scientific premise seriously enough to follow it all the way to its consequences. Wells spent a career doing little else. They are more than sixty years and one idea apart, and the library now holds both ends of it.

Below, for the record rather than the reading: all 381.

Dewey Mianaai
Librarian, Ferrand Library

Everything that arrived

381 books, FL-0213 to FL-0594. Every shelf opens. A book that sits on two shelves is filed in both drawers, so the drawer counts add up to 534 rather than 381.

Fiction175

FL-0214	George	Alex Gino	2015
FL-0218	Foundation's Edge	Isaac Asimov	1982
FL-0219	Robot Visions	Isaac Asimov	1990
FL-0223	To Protect	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2011
FL-0224	Robots and Empire	Isaac Asimov	1985
FL-0225	Second Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1953
FL-0226	The Windup Girl	Paolo Bacigalupi	2009
FL-0229	The Visitors	Clifford D. Simak	1980
FL-0231	To Obey	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2013
FL-0234	To Preserve	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2016
FL-0244	The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft	H. P. Lovecraft	2017
FL-0265	The Complete Novels of Victor Hugo	Victor Hugo	1874
FL-0266	Mark Twain: Complete Novels	Mark Twain	1902
FL-0272	The Whisper Man: A Novel	Alex North	2019
FL-0273	The London Seance Society	Sarah Penner	2023
FL-0278	All's Well That Ends Well	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0282	Antony and Cleopatra	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0284	As You Like It	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0290	The Comedy of Errors	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0297	The Taming of the Shrew	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0302	The Tempest	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0306	Timon of Athens	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0311	Titus Andronicus	William Shakespeare	1594
FL-0313	Troilus and Cressida	William Shakespeare	1609
FL-0317	Twelfth Night, or What You Will	William Shakespeare	1623
FL-0323	The Complete Works of William Shakespeare	William Shakespeare	1613
FL-0336	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	J.K. Rowling	1998
FL-0337	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	J.K. Rowling	1998
FL-0338	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	J.K. Rowling	1999
FL-0339	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	J.K. Rowling	2000
FL-0340	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	J.K. Rowling	2005
FL-0341	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J.K. Rowling	2007
FL-0342	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J.K. Rowling	2003
FL-0367	Mammoth	John Varley	2005
FL-0368	48 Hours	William R. Forstchen	2019
FL-0369	Nemesis	Isaac Asimov	1989
FL-0370	The Cone	H. G. Wells
FL-0371	A Catastrophe	H. G. Wells
FL-0372	A Deal in Ostriches	H. G. Wells
FL-0373	A Dream of Armageddon	H. G. Wells
FL-0374	A Family Elopement	H. G. Wells
FL-0375	A Misunderstood Artist	H. G. Wells
FL-0378	A Slip Under the Microscope	H. G. Wells
FL-0379	A Story of the Days to Come	H. G. Wells
FL-0380	A Story of the Stone Age	H. G. Wells
FL-0381	A Tale of the Twentieth Century	H. G. Wells
FL-0382	A Talk with Gryllotalpa	H. G. Wells
FL-0383	A Vision of Judgment	H. G. Wells
FL-0384	Aepyornis Island	H. G. Wells
FL-0385	Ann Veronica	H. G. Wells
FL-0386	Answer to Prayer	H. G. Wells
FL-0387	Bealby	H. G. Wells
FL-0388	Filmer	H. G. Wells
FL-0389	The Apple	H. G. Wells
FL-0390	The Argonauts of the Air	H. G. Wells
FL-0391	The Beautiful Suit	H. G. Wells
FL-0392	The Chronic Argonauts	H. G. Wells
FL-0393	The Country of the Blind	H. G. Wells
FL-0394	The Crystal Egg	H. G. Wells
FL-0395	The Devotee of Art	H. G. Wells
FL-0396	The Diamond Maker	H. G. Wells
FL-0397	The Door in the Wall	H. G. Wells
FL-0398	The Empire of the Ants	H. G. Wells
FL-0399	The First Men in the Moon	H. G. Wells
FL-0400	The Flowering of the Strange Orchid	H. G. Wells
FL-0401	The Flying Man	H. G. Wells
FL-0402	The Food of the Gods	H. G. Wells
FL-0404	The Hammerpond Park Burglary	H. G. Wells
FL-0405	The History of Mr Polly	H. G. Wells
FL-0406	The Inexperienced Ghost	H. G. Wells
FL-0407	The Island of Doctor Moreau	H. G. Wells
FL-0408	The Jilting of Jane	H. G. Wells
FL-0410	The Lord of the Dynamos	H. G. Wells
FL-0411	The Lost Inheritance	H. G. Wells
FL-0412	The Loyalty of Esau Common	H. G. Wells
FL-0413	The Magic Shop	H. G. Wells
FL-0414	The Man Who Could Work Miracles	H. G. Wells
FL-0415	The Man with a Nose	H. G. Wells
FL-0417	The Moth	H. G. Wells
FL-0418	The New Accelerator	H. G. Wells
FL-0419	The New Faust	H. G. Wells
FL-0420	The New Machiavelli	H. G. Wells
FL-0421	The Obliterated Man	H. G. Wells
FL-0423	The Passionate Friends	H. G. Wells
FL-0424	The Pearl of Love	H. G. Wells
FL-0426	The Presence by the Fire	H. G. Wells
FL-0427	The Purple Pileus	H. G. Wells
FL-0428	The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper	H. G. Wells
FL-0429	The Rajah’s Treasure	H. G. Wells
FL-0430	The Reconciliation	H. G. Wells
FL-0431	The Red Room	H. G. Wells
FL-0433	The Research Magnificent	H. G. Wells
FL-0434	The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic	H. G. Wells
FL-0435	The Sea Lady	H. G. Wells
FL-0436	The Sea Raiders	H. G. Wells
FL-0437	The Secret Places of the Heart	H. G. Wells
FL-0438	The Soul of a Bishop	H. G. Wells
FL-0439	The Star	H. G. Wells
FL-0440	The Stolen Bacillus	H. G. Wells
FL-0442	The Story of the Last Trump	H. G. Wells
FL-0443	The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham	H. G. Wells
FL-0444	The Temptation of Harringay	H. G. Wells
FL-0445	The Thing in No. 7	H. G. Wells
FL-0446	The Thumbmark	H. G. Wells
FL-0447	The Time Machine	H. G. Wells
FL-0448	The Treasure in the Forest	H. G. Wells
FL-0449	The Triumphs of a Taxidermist	H. G. Wells
FL-0450	The Truth about Pyecraft	H. G. Wells
FL-0451	The Undying Fire	H. G. Wells
FL-0452	The Valley of Spiders	H. G. Wells
FL-0454	The War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells
FL-0455	The Wheels of Chance	H. G. Wells
FL-0459	The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman	H. G. Wells
FL-0460	The Wild Asses of the Devil	H. G. Wells
FL-0462	The Wonderful Visit	H. G. Wells
FL-0465	Through a Window	H. G. Wells
FL-0466	Tono-Bungay	H. G. Wells
FL-0467	Under the Knife	H. G. Wells
FL-0468	Walcote	H. G. Wells
FL-0470	Wayde’s Essence	H. G. Wells
FL-0471	When the Sleeper Wakes	H. G. Wells
FL-0474	How Gabriel Became Thompson	H. G. Wells
FL-0475	In the Abyss	H. G. Wells
FL-0476	In the Avu Observatory	H. G. Wells
FL-0477	The Stand	Stephen King	1978
FL-0480	In the Modern Vein	H. G. Wells
FL-0482	Jimmy Goggles the God	H. G. Wells
FL-0483	Joan and Peter	H. G. Wells
FL-0484	Kipps	H. G. Wells
FL-0485	Le Mari Terrible	H. G. Wells
FL-0486	Little Mother Up the Morderberg	H. G. Wells
FL-0488	Love and Mr. Lewisham	H. G. Wells
FL-0489	Marriage	H. G. Wells
FL-0490	Miss Winchelsea's Heart	H. G. Wells
FL-0491	Mr. Brisher’s Treasure	H. G. Wells
FL-0492	Mr. Britling Sees It Through	H. G. Wells
FL-0493	Mr. Ledbetter’s Vacation	H. G. Wells
FL-0494	Mr. Marshall’s Doppelganger	H. G. Wells
FL-0495	Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland	H. G. Wells
FL-0496	My First Aeroplane (“Alauda Magna”)	H. G. Wells
FL-0498	Our Little Neighbour	H. G. Wells
FL-0499	Perfect Gentleman on Wheels	H. G. Wells
FL-0500	Pollock and the Porroh Man	H. G. Wells
FL-0502	How Pingwill Was Routed	H. G. Wells
FL-0506	Beyond the Chocolate War	Robert Cormier	1985
FL-0512	The Chocolate War	Robert Cormier	1974
FL-0514	Ballistic	Marko Kloos	2020
FL-0517	Citadel	Marko Kloos	2021
FL-0520	Ender's Shadow	Orson Scott Card	1999
FL-0521	Toby's Room	Pat Barker	2012
FL-0523	Life Class	Pat Barker	2007
FL-0524	A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor	Hank Green	2020
FL-0525	Ender in Exile	Orson Scott Card	2009
FL-0526	Earth Afire	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2013
FL-0532	Starbound	Joe Haldeman	2009
FL-0533	Earthbound	Joe Haldeman	2011
FL-0543	Speaker for the Dead	Orson Scott Card	1986
FL-0550	Shadows in Flight	Orson Scott Card	2012
FL-0551	The Last Shadow	Orson Scott Card	2021
FL-0560	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	2006
FL-0561	The Flock	James Robert Smith	2010
FL-0562	The United States of Atlantis	Harry Turtledove	2009
FL-0567	Under the Dome	Stephen King	2009
FL-0572	Earth Unaware	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2012
FL-0573	Earth Awakens	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2014
FL-0574	The Swarm	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2016
FL-0575	A War of Gifts	Orson Scott Card	2007
FL-0576	Children of the Fleet	Orson Scott Card	2017
FL-0577	The Hive	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2019
FL-0578	First Meetings in the Enderverse	Orson Scott Card	2004
FL-0579	Xenocide	Orson Scott Card	1991
FL-0580	The French Girl	Lexie Elliott	2018
FL-0581	Mad Honey	Jodi Picoult	2022
FL-0582	The Storyteller	Jodi Picoult	2013
FL-0583	Verses for the Dead	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2018

Science Fiction138

FL-0216	A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge	1992
FL-0218	Foundation's Edge	Isaac Asimov	1982
FL-0219	Robot Visions	Isaac Asimov	1990
FL-0223	To Protect	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2011
FL-0224	Robots and Empire	Isaac Asimov	1985
FL-0225	Second Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1953
FL-0226	The Windup Girl	Paolo Bacigalupi	2009
FL-0229	The Visitors	Clifford D. Simak	1980
FL-0231	To Obey	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2013
FL-0234	To Preserve	Mickey Zucker Reichert	2016
FL-0244	The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft	H. P. Lovecraft	2017
FL-0258	The Apollo Murders	Colonel Chris Hadfield	2021
FL-0325	Aftershocks: The Palladium Wars, Book 1	Marko Kloos	2019
FL-0326	An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: A Novel	Hank Green	2018
FL-0327	Chapterhouse: Dune	Frank Herbert	1985
FL-0328	Dune Messiah	Frank Herbert	1969
FL-0329	Heretics of Dune	Frank Herbert	1984
FL-0330	Dune	Frank Herbert	1965
FL-0331	God Emperor of Dune	Frank Herbert	1981
FL-0332	Daemon	Daniel Suarez	2006
FL-0333	Freedom (TM)	Daniel Suarez	2010
FL-0334	Influx	Daniel Suarez	2014
FL-0335	Children of Dune	Frank Herbert	1976
FL-0343	Directive 51	John Barnes	2011
FL-0344	Daybreak Zero	John Barnes	2011
FL-0345	Hyperion	Dan Simmons	1989
FL-0346	The Fall of Hyperion	Dan Simmons	1990
FL-0347	The Rise of Endymion	Dan Simmons	1997
FL-0348	Endymion	Dan Simmons	1996
FL-0349	Orphans of the Helix	Dan Simmons	1999
FL-0350	House Atreides	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0351	House Harkonnen	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0352	House Corrino	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0353	The Machine Crusade	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0354	The Battle of Corrin	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0355	Paul of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0356	The Winds of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0357	Sisterhood of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0358	Mentats of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0359	Navigators of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0360	The Duke of Caladan	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0361	The Lady of Caladan	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0362	The Heir of Caladan	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0363	Tales of Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0364	The Road to Dune	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0365	The Science of Dune	Kevin R. Grazier (editor)
FL-0366	Dune: The Butlerian Jihad	Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
FL-0367	Mammoth	John Varley	2005
FL-0368	48 Hours	William R. Forstchen	2019
FL-0369	Nemesis	Isaac Asimov	1989
FL-0373	A Dream of Armageddon	H. G. Wells
FL-0379	A Story of the Days to Come	H. G. Wells
FL-0381	A Tale of the Twentieth Century	H. G. Wells
FL-0384	Aepyornis Island	H. G. Wells
FL-0388	Filmer	H. G. Wells
FL-0390	The Argonauts of the Air	H. G. Wells
FL-0392	The Chronic Argonauts	H. G. Wells
FL-0393	The Country of the Blind	H. G. Wells
FL-0394	The Crystal Egg	H. G. Wells
FL-0396	The Diamond Maker	H. G. Wells
FL-0398	The Empire of the Ants	H. G. Wells
FL-0399	The First Men in the Moon	H. G. Wells
FL-0400	The Flowering of the Strange Orchid	H. G. Wells
FL-0402	The Food of the Gods	H. G. Wells
FL-0407	The Island of Doctor Moreau	H. G. Wells
FL-0409	The Land Ironclads	H. G. Wells
FL-0410	The Lord of the Dynamos	H. G. Wells
FL-0418	The New Accelerator	H. G. Wells
FL-0419	The New Faust	H. G. Wells
FL-0425	The Plattner Story	H. G. Wells
FL-0428	The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper	H. G. Wells
FL-0432	The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes	H. G. Wells
FL-0435	The Sea Lady	H. G. Wells
FL-0436	The Sea Raiders	H. G. Wells
FL-0439	The Star	H. G. Wells
FL-0440	The Stolen Bacillus	H. G. Wells
FL-0441	The Stolen Body	H. G. Wells
FL-0443	The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham	H. G. Wells
FL-0447	The Time Machine	H. G. Wells
FL-0452	The Valley of Spiders	H. G. Wells
FL-0453	The War in the Air	H. G. Wells
FL-0454	The War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells
FL-0456	The Martian	Andy Weir	2012
FL-0457	The Martian Way	Isaac Asimov	1952
FL-0458	The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950
FL-0461	The End of Eternity	Isaac Asimov	1955
FL-0462	The Wonderful Visit	H. G. Wells
FL-0463	The Day after Oblivion	Tim Washburn	2017
FL-0464	The World Set Free	H. G. Wells	1914
FL-0471	When the Sleeper Wakes	H. G. Wells
FL-0475	In the Abyss	H. G. Wells
FL-0478	In the Days of the Comet	H. G. Wells
FL-0479	More Than Human	Theodore Sturgeon	1953
FL-0481	The Man in the High Castle	Philip K. Dick	1962
FL-0503	The Colonel	Peter Watts	2014
FL-0504	2010: Odyssey Two	Arthur C. Clarke	1982
FL-0505	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	1985
FL-0507	Forever Free	Joe Haldeman	1999
FL-0510	Shadow of the Hegemon	Orson Scott Card	2001
FL-0511	Shadow Puppets	Orson Scott Card	2002
FL-0513	3001: The Final Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke	1997
FL-0514	Ballistic	Marko Kloos	2020
FL-0515	2061: Odyssey Three	Arthur C. Clarke	1987
FL-0517	Citadel	Marko Kloos	2021
FL-0518	Descent	Marko Kloos	2024
FL-0520	Ender's Shadow	Orson Scott Card	1999
FL-0524	A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor	Hank Green	2020
FL-0525	Ender in Exile	Orson Scott Card	2009
FL-0526	Earth Afire	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2013
FL-0528	Children of Memory	Adrian Tchaikovsky	2022
FL-0531	Robogenesis	Daniel H. Wilson	2014
FL-0532	Starbound	Joe Haldeman	2009
FL-0533	Earthbound	Joe Haldeman	2011
FL-0539	Shadow of the Giant	Orson Scott Card	2006
FL-0543	Speaker for the Dead	Orson Scott Card	1986
FL-0550	Shadows in Flight	Orson Scott Card	2012
FL-0551	The Last Shadow	Orson Scott Card	2021
FL-0557	The Atlantis Gene	A. G. Riddle	2013
FL-0558	The Atlantis Plague	A. G. Riddle	2013
FL-0559	The Atlantis World	A. G. Riddle	2014
FL-0560	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	2006
FL-0561	The Flock	James Robert Smith	2010
FL-0562	The United States of Atlantis	Harry Turtledove	2009
FL-0572	Earth Unaware	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2012
FL-0573	Earth Awakens	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2014
FL-0574	The Swarm	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2016
FL-0575	A War of Gifts	Orson Scott Card	2007
FL-0576	Children of the Fleet	Orson Scott Card	2017
FL-0577	The Hive	Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card	2019
FL-0578	First Meetings in the Enderverse	Orson Scott Card	2004
FL-0579	Xenocide	Orson Scott Card	1991
FL-0586	Pillar to the Sky	William R. Forstchen	2014
FL-0587	The Space Between Worlds	Micaiah Johnson	2020
FL-0589	Arctic Rising	Tobias S. Buckell	2012
FL-0590	Ark	Stephen Baxter	2009
FL-0591	Landfall	Stephen Baxter	2015
FL-0592	Flood	Stephen Baxter	2008
FL-0593	Nightfall	Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg	1991

Politics48

FL-0213	The Light We Carry	Michelle Obama	2022
FL-0228	Permanent Record	Edward J. Snowden	2019
FL-0233	Gay New York	George Chauncey	1994
FL-0239	The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction	Michel Foucault	1976
FL-0240	The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure	Michel Foucault	1984
FL-0241	The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self	Michel Foucault	1984
FL-0245	Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House	Michael Wolff	2018
FL-0246	Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In	Bernie Sanders	2016
FL-0248	Nicomachean Ethics	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0249	Eudemian Ethics	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0250	Hard Choices: A Memoir	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2014
FL-0251	White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism	Robin DiAngelo	2018
FL-0252	The Communist Manifesto	Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx	1848
FL-0253	Magna Moralia	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0254	Virtues and Vices	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0261	Iran: A Modern History	Abbas Amanat	2017
FL-0268	Living History	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2003
FL-0269	My Life	Bill Clinton	2004
FL-0270	President Nixon: Alone in the White House	Richard Reeves	2001
FL-0271	The Truths We Hold: An American Journey	Kamala Harris	2019
FL-0318	What Happened	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2017
FL-0319	The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017	Rashid Khalidi	2019
FL-0320	The Radical King (King Legacy)	Cornel West	2015
FL-0321	The Undocumented Americans	Karla Cornejo Villavicencio	2020
FL-0327	Chapterhouse: Dune	Frank Herbert	1985
FL-0328	Dune Messiah	Frank Herbert	1969
FL-0329	Heretics of Dune	Frank Herbert	1984
FL-0330	Dune	Frank Herbert	1965
FL-0331	God Emperor of Dune	Frank Herbert	1981
FL-0335	Children of Dune	Frank Herbert	1976
FL-0376	A Modern Utopia	H. G. Wells
FL-0385	Ann Veronica	H. G. Wells
FL-0412	The Loyalty of Esau Common	H. G. Wells
FL-0416	The Misery of Boots	H. G. Wells
FL-0420	The New Machiavelli	H. G. Wells
FL-0433	The Research Magnificent	H. G. Wells
FL-0459	The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman	H. G. Wells
FL-0464	The World Set Free	H. G. Wells	1914
FL-0466	Tono-Bungay	H. G. Wells
FL-0469	Washington and the Riddle of Peace	H. G. Wells
FL-0478	In the Days of the Comet	H. G. Wells
FL-0497	New Worlds for Old	H. G. Wells
FL-0501	Russia in the Shadows	H. G. Wells
FL-0530	Parkland – Birth of a Movement	Dave Cullen	2019
FL-0566	The Grand Design	Leonard Mlodinow, Stephen Hawking	2010
FL-0569	Understanding Iran	William R. Polk	2009
FL-0584	To the Finland Station	Edmund Wilson	1940
FL-0594	The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed & the Decline of Our Middle Class	Bernie Sanders	2010

History38

FL-0230	Ignition! – An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants	John D. Clark	1972
FL-0233	Gay New York	George Chauncey	1994
FL-0239	The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction	Michel Foucault	1976
FL-0240	The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure	Michel Foucault	1984
FL-0241	The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self	Michel Foucault	1984
FL-0243	The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life	Erving Goffman	1959
FL-0245	Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House	Michael Wolff	2018
FL-0246	Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In	Bernie Sanders	2016
FL-0247	Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction	Jonathan Barnes	2000
FL-0248	Nicomachean Ethics	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0249	Eudemian Ethics	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0250	Hard Choices: A Memoir	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2014
FL-0251	White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism	Robin DiAngelo	2018
FL-0252	The Communist Manifesto	Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx	1848
FL-0253	Magna Moralia	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0254	Virtues and Vices	Aristotle	c. 330 BC
FL-0255	Forces for Good	Heather McLeod Grant, Leslie R. Crutchfield	2007
FL-0256	Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer	Jim Collins	2005
FL-0257	The Sealed Nectar	Safiur Rahman Al Mubarakpuri	1979
FL-0261	Iran: A Modern History	Abbas Amanat	2017
FL-0273	The London Seance Society	Sarah Penner	2023
FL-0275	The Complete 54-Book Apocrypha	Covenant Christian Coalition	2022
FL-0319	The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017	Rashid Khalidi	2019
FL-0320	The Radical King (King Legacy)	Cornel West	2015
FL-0321	The Undocumented Americans	Karla Cornejo Villavicencio	2020
FL-0322	Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons	Kris Newby	2019
FL-0377	A Short History of the World	H. G. Wells
FL-0403	The Grisly Folk	H. G. Wells
FL-0422	The Outline of History	H. G. Wells	1920
FL-0523	Life Class	Pat Barker	2007
FL-0527	Columbine	Dave Cullen	2019
FL-0530	Parkland – Birth of a Movement	Dave Cullen	2019
FL-0568	Inferno	Max Hastings	2011
FL-0569	Understanding Iran	William R. Polk	2009
FL-0571	Lost Islamic History	Firas Alkhateeb	2017
FL-0582	The Storyteller	Jodi Picoult	2013
FL-0584	To the Finland Station	Edmund Wilson	1940
FL-0588	The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present	Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius	2009

Poetry and Myth35

FL-0232	Song of the Stone Wall	Helen Keller	1910
FL-0274	Cymbeline	William Shakespeare	c. 1610
FL-0276	The Sonnets	William Shakespeare	1609
FL-0277	Hamlet	William Shakespeare	c. 1600
FL-0279	Henry V	William Shakespeare	c. 1599
FL-0280	Henry IV, Part 1	William Shakespeare	c. 1597
FL-0281	Henry IV, Part 2	William Shakespeare	c. 1598
FL-0283	Henry VI, Part 1	William Shakespeare	c. 1591
FL-0285	Love's Labour's Lost	William Shakespeare	c. 1594
FL-0286	Macbeth	William Shakespeare	c. 1606
FL-0287	The Rape of Lucrece	William Shakespeare	1594
FL-0288	Henry VI, Part 2	William Shakespeare	c. 1591
FL-0289	The Two Gentlemen of Verona	William Shakespeare	c. 1589
FL-0291	Measure for Measure	William Shakespeare	c. 1603
FL-0292	The Merchant of Venice	William Shakespeare	c. 1596
FL-0293	The Merry Wives of Windsor	William Shakespeare	c. 1597
FL-0294	A Midsummer Night's Dream	William Shakespeare	c. 1595
FL-0295	Much Ado About Nothing	William Shakespeare	c. 1598
FL-0296	Venus and Adonis	William Shakespeare	1593
FL-0298	Othello	William Shakespeare	c. 1603
FL-0299	The Two Noble Kinsmen	William Shakespeare	c. 1613
FL-0300	Henry VI, Part 3	William Shakespeare	c. 1591
FL-0301	The Winter's Tale	William Shakespeare	c. 1610
FL-0303	Pericles, Prince of Tyre	William Shakespeare	c. 1607
FL-0304	Henry VIII	William Shakespeare	1613
FL-0305	A Lover's Complaint	William Shakespeare	1609
FL-0307	Richard II	William Shakespeare	c. 1595
FL-0308	Richard III	William Shakespeare	c. 1592
FL-0309	King John	William Shakespeare	c. 1596
FL-0310	The Passionate Pilgrim	William Shakespeare	1599
FL-0312	Julius Caesar	William Shakespeare	1599
FL-0314	The Phoenix and the Turtle	William Shakespeare	1601
FL-0315	King Lear	William Shakespeare	c. 1605
FL-0316	Romeo and Juliet	William Shakespeare	c. 1595
FL-0324	Coriolanus	William Shakespeare	c. 1608

Thrillers31

FL-0259	Relic	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	1995
FL-0260	Reliquary	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	1997
FL-0272	The Whisper Man: A Novel	Alex North	2019
FL-0343	Directive 51	John Barnes	2011
FL-0344	Daybreak Zero	John Barnes	2011
FL-0534	Still Life with Crows	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2003
FL-0535	Brimstone	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2011
FL-0536	The Cabinet of Curiosities	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2002
FL-0537	Dance of Death	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2005
FL-0538	The Book of the Dead	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2006
FL-0540	The Wheel of Darkness	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2007
FL-0541	Cemetery Dance	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2009
FL-0542	Fever Dream	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2010
FL-0544	Cold Vengeance	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2011
FL-0545	Two Graves	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2012
FL-0546	Extraction	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2012
FL-0547	White Fire	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2013
FL-0548	Blue Labyrinth	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2014
FL-0549	Crimson Shore	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2015
FL-0552	The Obsidian Chamber	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2016
FL-0553	City of Endless Night	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2018
FL-0554	Crooked River	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2020
FL-0555	Bloodless	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2021
FL-0556	The Cabinet of Dr. Leng	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2023
FL-0557	The Atlantis Gene	A. G. Riddle	2013
FL-0558	The Atlantis Plague	A. G. Riddle	2013
FL-0559	The Atlantis World	A. G. Riddle	2014
FL-0567	Under the Dome	Stephen King	2009
FL-0580	The French Girl	Lexie Elliott	2018
FL-0581	Mad Honey	Jodi Picoult	2022
FL-0583	Verses for the Dead	Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child	2018

Science and Tech25

FL-0215	The Mosquito	Timothy Winegard	2019
FL-0222	Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe	Brian Greene	2020
FL-0227	Elon Musk	Ashlee Vance	2015
FL-0228	Permanent Record	Edward J. Snowden	2019
FL-0230	Ignition! – An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants	John D. Clark	1972
FL-0236	Keepers of the Garden	Cannon, Dolores	1993
FL-0237	Outliers: The Story of Success	Malcolm Gladwell	2008
FL-0242	The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business	Charles Duhigg	2012
FL-0247	Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction	Jonathan Barnes	2000
FL-0322	Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons	Kris Newby	2019
FL-0332	Daemon	Daniel Suarez	2006
FL-0333	Freedom (TM)	Daniel Suarez	2010
FL-0334	Influx	Daniel Suarez	2014
FL-0472	Zoological Retrogression	H. G. Wells
FL-0509	Project Blue Book: Exposed	Kevin Randle	2019
FL-0516	Children of Ruin	Adrian Tchaikovsky	2019
FL-0519	Children of Strife	Adrian Tchaikovsky	2026
FL-0522	Children of the Mind	Orson Scott Card	1996
FL-0563	A Double Planet	Isaac Asimov	2020
FL-0564	The Laws of Thermodynamics	Peter Atkins	2010
FL-0565	The Elegant Universe	Brian Greene	2000
FL-0566	The Grand Design	Leonard Mlodinow, Stephen Hawking	2010
FL-0570	U.S. Armed Forces Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Survival Manual	Capt. USN (ret) Couch, Dick	2011
FL-0585	The Power of Babel	John McWhorter	2001
FL-0586	Pillar to the Sky	William R. Forstchen	2014

Faith13

FL-0217	We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir	Samra Habib	2019
FL-0235	The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom	Don Miguel, Ruiz	1997
FL-0236	Keepers of the Garden	Cannon, Dolores	1993
FL-0238	Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library	Barbara Marciniak	1994
FL-0257	The Sealed Nectar	Safiur Rahman Al Mubarakpuri	1979
FL-0261	Iran: A Modern History	Abbas Amanat	2017
FL-0262	Revive Your Heart	Nouman Ali Khan	2017
FL-0264	Purification of the Heart	Hamza Yusuf	2013
FL-0275	The Complete 54-Book Apocrypha	Covenant Christian Coalition	2022
FL-0382	A Talk with Gryllotalpa	H. G. Wells
FL-0386	Answer to Prayer	H. G. Wells
FL-0451	The Undying Fire	H. G. Wells
FL-0571	Lost Islamic History	Firas Alkhateeb	2017

Biography12

FL-0213	The Light We Carry	Michelle Obama	2022
FL-0217	We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir	Samra Habib	2019
FL-0221	The Story of My Life	Helen Keller	1903
FL-0227	Elon Musk	Ashlee Vance	2015
FL-0257	The Sealed Nectar	Safiur Rahman Al Mubarakpuri	1979
FL-0263	Einstein: His Life and Universe	Walter Isaacson	2007
FL-0268	Living History	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2003
FL-0269	My Life	Bill Clinton	2004
FL-0270	President Nixon: Alone in the White House	Richard Reeves	2001
FL-0271	The Truths We Hold: An American Journey	Kamala Harris	2019
FL-0318	What Happened	Hillary Rodham Clinton	2017
FL-0530	Parkland – Birth of a Movement	Dave Cullen	2019

War9

FL-0325	Aftershocks: The Palladium Wars, Book 1	Marko Kloos	2019
FL-0409	The Land Ironclads	H. G. Wells
FL-0453	The War in the Air	H. G. Wells
FL-0483	Joan and Peter	H. G. Wells
FL-0492	Mr. Britling Sees It Through	H. G. Wells
FL-0514	Ballistic	Marko Kloos	2020
FL-0517	Citadel	Marko Kloos	2021
FL-0521	Toby's Room	Pat Barker	2012
FL-0568	Inferno	Max Hastings	2011

Craft8

FL-0213	The Light We Carry	Michelle Obama	2022
FL-0235	The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom	Don Miguel, Ruiz	1997
FL-0255	Forces for Good	Heather McLeod Grant, Leslie R. Crutchfield	2007
FL-0256	Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer	Jim Collins	2005
FL-0473	Floor Games	H. G. Wells
FL-0487	Little Wars	H. G. Wells
FL-0508	Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love	Sue Johnson	2008
FL-0529	Think and Grow Rich	Napoleon Hill	1937

Philosophy1

FL-0267

Aristotle's Ethics: Writings from the Complete Works

Aristotle

2014

The Nuclear Age1

FL-0570

U.S. Armed Forces Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Survival Manual

Capt. USN (ret) Couch, Dick

2011