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Preserving the Future From the Past

Neighborhood Joint: Singularity & Co.: The vintage science fiction bookstore Singularity & Co.

operates from a small storefront in Brooklyn.

By GILI MALINSKY

Published: October 31, 2013

Sometime during Singularity & Co.s first year in business, a 10-year-old boy walked with his

father into this science fiction, fantasy and vintage pulp bookstore. The boy stopped at the

entrance, inhaled audibly and announced, I love the smell of old books!

Located on Bridge Street in Brooklyn near the Manhattan Bridge, Singularity & Co. is a living,

breathing science fiction paradox: a collection of futurism from the past. The store sells everything

from Isaac Asimov to Marion Zimmer Bradley, stocked wall-to-wall with colorful, worn spines.

Rows of collectible paperbacks and Star Wars and Star Trek literature greet customers at the

entrance, above them aging copies of magazines like Amazing Stories and Analog Science Fiction

and Fact. Several photon-laser sets and an old Macintosh SE personal computer all in working

condition are on display, guarded by a full suit of armor (named Max), which stands in a corner.

Older gentlemen tell us that it looks like their teenage bedroom, said Cici James, 30, one of the

stores owners.

Singularity & Co. opened in August 2012, the happy accident of a Kickstarter campaign to rescue

vintage science fiction titles that had fallen out of print and were in danger of disappearing.

Dismayed to learn that certain classic books were in jeopardy like Doomsday Morning by C. L.

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Moore (1957) and A Plunge Into Space by Robert Cromie (1890) Ms. James, along with her

husband, Ash Kalb, 35, and a friend, Jamil V. Moen, 34, decided to raise money to publish them

electronically, one book a month.

Their campaign (Save the SciFi!) raised well over their initial goal of $15,000, and Mr. Kalb and

Ms. James soon found their spare bedroom packed with piles of used books, which they would

rifle through for stories worth saving. At the time, Mr. Kalb, a lawyer who advises tech start-ups,

happened to be looking for office space in which to work and meet clients. Before Save the SciFi!

he and Ms. James had toyed with the notion of having an office with a storefront, but they

werent surewhat they would sell. By the end of the campaign, it was obvious.

The clientele of the store goes well beyond the clich of the sci-fi geek.

Everybodys into sci-fi, said Mr. Kalb, noting that customers range from 12-year-old girls looking

for books about dragons to lifelong collectors like Gary Levy, 59, who works the cash register on

Saturdays.

On one Sunday in October, Roy Miller, 44, a man who has a shaved head and was wearing all

black, spent several hours browsing Singularitys bookshelves. Alongtime science fiction devotee,

Mr. Miller was thrilled to find old favorites like Michael McCollums Life Probe, which he had

checked out of the library as a teenager and loved. That day he was looking for C. J. Cherryh titles.

That same afternoon, Josh Slater, 34, brought a friend visiting from San Francisco, Lauren M. Taylor,

35. Mr. Slater is a visual artist and a regular at Singularity & Co., and for him the thrill of sci-fi is

not just in the stories but in the books cover art.

Mr. Slater, who was considering the work of the visionary Fredric Brown, said he often bought

multiple editions of the same book simply for the various covers. Visiting Singularity & Co., he

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said, is like going to an art gallery.

Its well curated, he added, andeverything looks cool from far away.