In 2014, Laura McKnight had a warning for anyone borrowing a banana from MIT's science-fiction library: bring it back on time. Members could take home some of the toy bananas that decorated the MIT Science Fiction Society's rooms, and the electronic checkout system could fine them for returning one late. The collection included a banana wearing chainmail and another with a shark bursting from its peel.[1]

During her tour for MIT News, McKnight pointed out bananas hanging from the ceiling, tucked among the books and taking up scarce desk space. Her own office was called “vice,” approximately vice president, and she couldn't explain how the banana obsession had begun. The toys had acquired a place in a library whose members had spent decades working out how to keep track of things.[1]

When Rudolf Preisendorfer founded the society in 1949, its books could travel between dorm rooms in a wooden box. By the time McKnight showed MIT News around, reaching the upper paperback shelves required ladders. Members had once hoped to collect all the science fiction ever published, an ambition that the growth of self-publishing had made impossible.[1]

During the 1960s, Anthony Lewis had pursued that goal through the magazines where so much early science fiction appeared. Members searched bookstores in Boston and New York for missing issues, then bound the completed sets into volumes. Lewis worried about losing stories printed on paper that people might throw away. When Tate Williams interviewed him for The Magazine in 2014, those old magazines were still in the library, their cheap paper yellowed and brittle.[2]

As the collection grew, other members found work that suited them. Marilyn Wisowaty built a catalog on IBM punch cards that became known as Pinkdex, after her nickname, Fuzzy Pink. The name carried over to the online catalog. Volunteers known as keyholders opened the rooms and helped keep the books circulating, sometimes for decades after their student years. Williams described Jade Wang's weekly volunteer shifts and Jack Stevens's service of more than forty years. Wang remembered growing up with libraries that had only scattered volumes of a series; here, a reader could find the others.[2]

At the society's meetings, members gave this appetite for procedure considerable freedom. An MIT News account from 2012 described a three-foot wrench serving as a gavel and a voting system that let each person cast a vote with every limb. A member could support a proposal with one arm while opposing it with the other or abstaining with a leg. That year's report recorded the passage of a motion to develop a vegan turkey made of bananas, while a banana-colored turkey failed to win approval.[4]

Anyone can still browse the library during its opening hours, according to the society's website, and membership is open to people outside MIT. Alongside science fiction are fantasy books, magazines and related material, with a circulating collection available to borrow. The toy-banana lending arrangement belongs to McKnight's 2014 account.[3][1]

Near the entrance on that visit stood the original wooden box. It had become a time capsule, and McKnight said nobody knew when it was supposed to be opened. For the moment, it stayed sealed beside the stacks.[1]

Sources

  1. MIT News: Boxes, books, and bananas (2014)
  2. Tate Williams: Mad Scientist Club (2014)
  3. MIT Science Fiction Society: official website
  4. MIT News: Science Fiction Society’s massive library is out of this world (2012)

Image: “MITSFS library 1,” showing the MIT Science Fiction Society library in 2012, photographed by LFaraone, CC BY 3.0. Cropped and resized. The photograph shows the library, not a banana loan.