I'd gone back too far. Now the cartoon boy stood before an almost ceiling-high bookshelf containing row upon row of old paperbacks: Aldriss, Anderson, Asimov, Ballard... the science fiction section... Bester, Boese, Butler, Campbell, Clarke, Davidson, Delany.

He pulled out a copy of Empire Star. It had the same cover as the copy he had been reading in the previous tape -- bare-chested Comet Jo (the artist had neglected to give him nipples), holding his lynx-like six-legged pet, his "devil kitten", Di'k -- and with its faded covers, creased spine, and thirty-five cent cover price, it even looked old enough to be the same copy. But it wasn't. It didn't have the creases running down the front and back covers. It wasn't the same book he had gripped so tightly that afternoon in his bedroom in his father's house, thirty years ago.

STOP.

FASTFORWARD.

PLAY.