Hastings

I don’t remember when, exactly, that Hastings Books and Records opened in my hometown. It seems like it was around the time I was in sixth or seventh grade, but don’t quote me on that. It started out as a narrow store in what used to be called a shopping center but now is referred to as a strip mall. I remember riding my bike the couple of miles to the store, mainly looking for new Star Trek books, or at least new to me. Back around the time of ST:TMP, the list of books related to the 1960’s show was a pretty short one. The catalog consisted of twelve books by James Blish that chronicled the episodes from the TV show, several in each; ten books that did the same with the episodes of the Animated Series; a short series of photonovels, basically breaking an original episode into stills and using dialogue boxes for the story, kind of like a realistic comic book, and they were pricey; and finally, about a dozen novels of varying length and quality. I read them all, and in the dark ages before the Internet, scoured magazines and even the bookseller’s order form to see if something new was coming out. The store didn’t stock everything, but I could order a book and it’d come in 2-3 weeks later, if I was lucky. I also remember several Star Wars novels that came out around the same time, such as Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Alan Dean Foster, rumored to be the basis for the next movie. Spoiler alert - it wasn’t. I haunted that little store, spending money earned from mowing lawns to buy $1.50 or $1.75 paperbacks. At some point, the store expanded by a lot, but that’s a story for another day.