Popular and Genre Fiction

The University of Calgary’s Bob Gibson Collection of Speculative Fiction consists of 28,000 published items of speculative fiction (SF), and reflects a lifetime of collecting by the late William Robert (Bob) Gibson. Following Bob’s passing in 2001, his son, Andrew Gibson, gifted the University of Calgary Library this remarkable example of speculative fiction.

The collection contains 1913 hardcover titles (some published as early as 1778), 24,030 softcover books, and runs of over 400 pulp magazine titles from the 1920’s to the early 2000’s. In addition to these published items, Mr. Gibson created his own personal anthologies of short fiction works published in British, American and Canadian periodicals from as early as 1870. There are 888 of these personal anthologies, estimated to contain roughly 6500 individual stories which Gibson deemed science fiction. The covers of these compilations list the contents of each anthology and have been hand-illustrated by Mr. Gibson. The collection was also enhanced by Mr. Gibson’s meticulous documentation and indexing of his items. There are over 10,000 author entries compiled on index cards and stored in three homemade wooden boxes. In some instances, the Gibson index is more complete than later published indexes for a particular author.

The University of Calgary’s Canadian Paperback Collection contains over 700 mass market paperback novels, significantly representing Canadian paperback publishing prior to 1961. The majority of the collection consists of the first Harlequin publications. Other publishers represented are White Circle, News Stand Library, Crow and Arrow.

Canadian paperbacks from this time are highly valued and relatively rare compared to their American counterparts, due to much smaller print runs. Harlequin novels have become especially scarce in Canada as they are sought by collectors internationally. The Canadian Paperback Collection is an excellent resource for research into Canadian popular culture as well as the history of the book in Canada.

The Eric Korn Collection of H.G. Wells consists of books, serial publications, audio recordings, and ephemera by H.G Wells, or adaptations of works by H.G. Wells. Eric Korn (1933 – 2014) was a writer, broadcaster, and antiquarian book dealer. His collection of Wells materials was acquired by the University of Calgary in 2010.