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If you’re adventurous enough to enter into the imaginations of science fiction writers and artists and want to experience what may go on there, come along with Vince Verrecchio at Lanier Library’s next Live@Lanier, taking place on Tuesday, June 27, at 1 p.m. 

An avid reader and retired advertising creative director, Vince draws on a lifetime of collecting science fiction and other fiction and non-fiction genres and pondering the creative process of writers and artists. With rare and vintage magazine and book covers, he will guide you through the rise and decline of the cheap paper science fiction magazines of the 30s and 40s and into the 50s explosion of hardbacks, paperbacks, and movies that ended the dominance of the pulps.  

To present “The Astounding, Amazing, Fantastic Imagination of Science Fiction,” Vince explores where astounding ideas originate from and asks, “How do stories become amazing?” 

For example, he tells about Jack Williamson, in 1931, imagining life in the dust bowl as a journey “Through The Purple Cloud.” In 1940, when medical radium was being used to shrink swollen tissues, Henry Kuttner imagined the application with “Dr. Cyclops” shrinking people. In the 1950s’ shadow of H-bomb testing, Judith Merrill’s “Shadow on the Hearth” told of one woman’s struggle to save her daughter after the bombs fell.

Vince asks, “Why would a writer, trying to make a living, put time and effort laboring on the fantastic?” One answer is from Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” who said, “I always wanted to write a dystopian novel just to see if I could.” 

Author Ray Bradbury envisioned himself on a mission, saying“Science fiction has always been and will always be a fable teacher of morality.”

Boldly go where no one has gone before during this presentation at Lanier Library, located at 72 Chestnut Street in Tryon. For more info visit  thelanierlibrary.org.