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The Golden Age of Science Fiction is considered to be the period from the late 1930s through the 1950s, a time when sci-fi gained steadily in popularity and many sci-fi classics were published.

Science fiction fan Peter Graham saw it from a different perspective. “The golden age of science fiction,” he observed, “is twelve.”

I don’t know who the heck Peter Graham is. I Googled him and didn’t find much. He’s described as a science fiction fan who famously made the above statement, and that’s about it.

Whoever he was, or is, his observation about science fiction was correct. In my case, I was a devoted fan from age 10 to age 16. For long periods during those years, between haunting the library and buying paperbacks, I read a sci-fi novel virtually every day.

I knew the name of every author in the business, popular and obscure. I knew their preferred sub-genres, their writing styles, and their previous works, in order of publication.

The new stuff coming out was my favorite, but I read the classics, too. Even at that tender age, I knew perfectly well which of it was intelligent, imaginative work and which of it was juvenile crapola.

I preferred novels, but I also read the reigning magazines of the day — Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, If, Galaxy, Infinity, and others. The magazines helped me stay current with industry happenings, and the short stories in them were like candy.

Paperbacks were cheap in those days, and I had an impressive collection of them. I usually managed to buy a new one every week.

For a while as a young teen, I received an allowance of one — count it — one dollar per week. With that princely sum, I could purchase a sci-fi novel for 35 cents; a movie ticket for 25 cents, a bag of popcorn for 15 cents, and a fountain Coke for 10 cents.

Which left a bit of spending money in my pocket. On a good week, when the novel only cost 25 cents, I was rolling in dough.

Alas, my extensive collection of science fiction paperbacks came to an ignoble end. A couple of years after I left for college, Mom jettisoned every one of my paperbacks. And my baseball cards.

(Long pause in remembrance of valuable collections thrown out in trash.)

I remember those years of tireless reading and devoted sci-fi fan-dom as being more about education than entertainment. I liked sci-fi because it was informative and visionary.

An author writing about the future isn’t restrained by the world as it is. He is free to let his imagination go and entertain all kinds of what-ifs.

In 1945, inventor and sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke began promoting the use of geostationary satellites as telecommunications relays. Talk about visionary.

Clarke later described the use of space elevators, which, for the rest of his life, he believed would make space shuttles obsolete. He may turn out to be right.

Eventually, my sci-fi years ended. The new and overwhelming world of high school, with its challenges, demands, and siren calls, saw to that.

In later years, I always remembered science fiction fondly. But I never returned to it, except once of twice. I read Ringworld, The Forever War, and a few others, but not much else.

Last year, however, I ran across a website that got me interested in sci-fi again. The website lists the classic novels of science fiction by rank.

Being a normal American, I can’t resist a list, so I started studying it.

I had read about one-third of the novels and remembered them quite well. I knew many more by title or author, but had not read them.

At some point, a light bulb came on in my head.

Classics are old, I reasoned, and old books are everywhere. Used bookstores sell ’em cheap. Furthermore, few people give a hoot about sci-fi. Those novels should be available for practically nothing.

Thus was born a new quest and, I’m proud to say, a new collection. List in hand, I began prowling the local used book stores. Quickly and steadily, I began picking up novels on the list for a song — $1.99 here, $6.95 there, some in hardback, some not.

I had to order a few of the titles online, because they were genuinely rare. But before long, I had located all of the first 50 on the list and about half of the rest.

My current sci-fi collection now occupies its own bookcase upstairs in my li-bry room. I’ve read about two dozen random titles so far.

Most were very good. A few were disappointing. But I’m just getting started.

As science fiction fan Rocky Smith recently observed, “The second golden age of science fiction is 66.”