I can read all night long

Years of effort, attempting to fall asleep through various methods has lead me to the realization that I can read all night long. Well, I lie. I didn’t actually recently realize it. I’ve known about this, it seems like, forever. As a child, it was science fiction stories about boys who live on Mars and discover a whole civilization that is underground, a flashlight and covers over my head which led to falling asleep in class. As an adult, it was more science fiction, in my own bed, in my own apartment which lead to falling asleep at work. As I approach fifty, it is science fiction, and insomnia, a staggered work schedule that makes it possible to take naps in the afternoon. So maybe it is not reading that keeps me up all night. It’s science fiction.

Big epic tales of somewhere or somewhen that I will never actually be able to experience in any other manner than one word at a time traveling beneath my eyes. I read nonfiction often, but it has to come in short bursts. My brain processes it in entirely different ways. Nonfiction is legitimately a nutritional meal that makes my brain grow muscles. Science Fiction is pure sugar. I can eat pure sugar all night long, it gives me that bang-go fast right now energy that keeps my eyes speeding across the page (or screen).

A few years ago, I read a science fiction series on my phone. It was awesome. Not that the series was awesome, I have no real clue about grading science fiction. It’s all crack to me. The experience was awesome because the characters in the story were constantly making navigational adjustments to their ships, communicating to the other characters, fighting battles and interacting with space ports and space navies through their Command and Control devices (basically smartphones).

Every few years another book comes along, finds its way into my hands and I start reading it. It never really is a thing that I think about before I start reading it. Sometimes it just happens. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I start negotiating. “I only have a hundred pages to go, I can finish this tonight.” Its crazy, I know it when I think it, but at that point the battle is lost. I will be awake until the book is finished. Even if it is densely written, like anything by Neil Stephenson, and the movie theater in my brain requires a great deal of production value to make the images dance, the characters breathe and the set flash in that vibrant and vivid way that nothing can reproduce, I am in for the long haul. I am going to see the sunrise. Or would see it if my eyes were not focused so directly on the book in front of me.

I enjoy waking up early in the morning. I enjoy seeing sunrises. I love this actually. But if I have a science fiction book that expands the edges of the universe as I know it, there is no way that I will make it to bed. There is no way that I will sleep until the voyage is completely and thoroughly consumed.

I’m looking forward to the next one, but for now, I will dream of a good page burning hyperspace voyage amongst the stars.