Eaton collection

comic books | fanzines | science fiction | speculative fiction | university of california, riverside

J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature, commonly known as Eaton Collection is the largest cataloged and publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and uropian and dystopian literature in the world. The collection is housed in the Special Collections at the University of California, Riverside Libraries. It consists of more than 110 000 hardcover and paperback books, 90 000 SF fanzines, film and visual material, 40 000 comic books including Manga and Anime, as well as a variety of archival materials.

History

When the family of the late Oakland physician and book collector Dr. J. Lloyd Eaton (1902-1968) sought a home for his collection of science fiction, they were not met with much enthusiasm among academic librarians. At that time, science fiction was considered an inferior literary product—pleasant enough as a diversion, but unworthy of serious academic study. As even public libraries did not regularly acquire science fiction, there was no public collection anywhere with a comprehensive collection. Dr. Eaton's collection, acquired by UCR in 1969, consisted of about 7,500 hardback editions of science fiction, fantasy and horror from the late nineteenth century to 1955, and it contained many rare and unusual titles. The development of the collection began in 1980 under University Librarian Eleanor Montague who created the position of Eaton Curator, hiring for the position George Slusser, a Harvard-trained literary scholar. During Slusser's 25-year curatorship, the Eaton collection grew to more than 110,000 volumes, ranging from the 1517 edition of Thomas More's Utopia to the most recently published titles. Foreign works of science fiction have been added systematically, including works in Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Spanish. The collection also includes journals, comic books, and fanzines, primarily acquired as donations from collectors Terry Carr, Bruce Pelz, Fred Patten, and Rick Sneary. In recent years, films, videos, DVDs, film scripts, and illustrated narratives have been added, most of which also have come as donations. The archival holdings comprise the papers of leading science fiction and fantasy authors, including Gregory Benford, F. M. Busby, Michael Cassutt, Robert L. Forward, Anne McCaffery, William Rotsler, Colin Wilson, and James White.

Eaton SF conference

As part of its scholarly mission, the Eaton Collection hosts a J. Lloyd Eaton Science Fiction Conference Eaton Science Fiction Conference webpage, launched in 1979. Over the years, twenty conferences have been held at UC Riverside, other have taken place at international venues, co-sponsored by UCR and various host institutions: London Polytechnic University,1984; the Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1986; University of Leeds, 1989; Texas A&M University, 1990; the Maison d'Ailleurs, Yverdon-les-bains, and the Université de Neuchâtel, 1991; Imperial College, London, 1995; the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000, and the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle in 2005. The conference has attracted a number of famous writers, including Brian Aldiss, Ray Bradbury, David Brin, Samuel R. Delany, Larry Niven, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon and Roger Zelazny and an equally distinguished group of critics and scientists including Harold Bloom, Leslie Fiedler, Fredric Jameson, Harry Levin, Marvin Minsky and Robert Scholes. The Conference has produced more than twenty volumes of critical essays Eaton conference essay collections, published by various university presses. Most of these volumes are still in print today, and continue to shape the field. After a three-year gap, the conference resumed at UCR campus in 2008.