Vic Grimley is a stallholder at the Cotton Tree Markets, in Maroochydore. A local, he drives down to King Street every Sunday to display his wares and, hopefully, to make a sale or two. Today he was lucky. He made two sales. Both my mum and I purchased books from his trailer.


Vic boasts that he owns about 800 books. Many of them are science fiction titles, like the two shown in his hands in the photograph above. He likes tradition. He lives with a 94-year-old woman who he has known for decades. And he says he doesn't have time for the Internet, even though he knows that his first editions might fetch a good price on eBay.


Although I don't read much science fiction nowadays, I couldn't resist these two. I paid $20 for the two. Both have dust jackets, as you can see, although they have been repaired with masking tape (it's on the reverse of the jacket, which is why you can't see it).

Mum bought two first editions, without dust jackets, to send to my brother, who remains a sci-fi buff after over thirty years.