The L.W. Currey Collection is a special science fiction archive in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas. The importance of this availability of information cannot be stressed enough, for the value of such a collection to researchers and future scholars cannot be denied. Through the course of this brief study, it becomes clear that science fiction holds much promise in helping to understand other fields as well as its own. What does authorship regarding hard and soft science fiction show but a reflection of the gender breakdown in hard and soft sciences? The following description contains some specific information about the nature of the collection, but it is barely a summation. The only weakness in the collection is the recent decline in acquisitions for it. Women are fairly represented (that is, female authors are in the collection but remain a minority in terms of holdings, reflecting publication figures) in the Currey Collection, but a number of female authors from the past five years are not present, simply because the funding for more acquisitions to the collection is not available. This is an ironic situation, for in the last decade more women such as Pat Cadigan, Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler having been making valuable contributions to the field, and their input is being neglected. To conclude the collection in the mid-eighties would be a charade indeed, for the reason behind such studies as these is to provide context and historical background for change. If the revolution is not documented, how will those who follow us know it took place?

In July 1982, The University of Texas at Austin approved the acquisition of the L. W. Currey Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection, a 3200 volume compilation of what was essentially the bibliographic collection for Currey's Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors. The University of Texas already owned the Lee Huddleston Science Fiction Collection, as well as the works of various authors in other collections that fit the categorization. The original goal was to acquire the 6,050 first editions Currey cited in his landmark bibliography, including the non-science fiction and non-fiction works by the same authors. Currey has donated an additional 2200 new titles to the collection; along with other donations to the extensive and comprehensive nature of the collection, and with the addition of the L. Sprague De Camp archives, the University has continued to pursue this field of interest.

The Currey Collection addresses two specific areas: Science Fiction from 1818 (the publication date of Frankenstein), and author collections of "major twentieth-century science fiction and fantasy authors," with additional material from the contemporary period. The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center collection emphasizes such authors as: Brian W. Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, J. G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Ray Bradbury (major holdings), John Brunner, John W. Campbell, Jr., Arthur C. Clarke, John Collier, L. Sprague De Camp (major holdings), Samuel R. Delany, August Derleth, Philip K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch, Harlan Ellison, Philip José Farmer, John Beynon Harris, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, William Hope Hodgson, Robert E. Howard, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft (major holdings), A. Merritt, Michael Moorcock, Mervyn Peake, Frederik Pohl, Joanna Russ, Robert Silverberg, Clark Aston Smith, E. E. Smith, Olaf Stapledon, Theodore Sturgeon, J. R. R. Tolkien, A. E. van Vogt, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut (major holdings), and Roger Zelanzny.

The Harry Ransom Center also owns hundreds of letters from or to many well-known literary writers from the early twentieth century responsible for authoring many fantastic literatures of the time, including A. Bierce, K. Capek, W. H. Hodgson, C. S. Lewis, G. Orwell, O. Stapledon, H. G. Wells, O. Stapledon and Philip Wylie. This repository is in addition to extensive manuscript holdings of Cabell, Doyle, Dunsany, Huxley, Machen, Poe, Ernest Braham Smith, Hames Stephens, Wells, and T. H. White. Contemporary author manuscripts include those of Andre Norton, Tom Reamy, Richard Matheson, and Brian Aldiss, among others.

Some of the noted pieces within the collection are Huxley's composite typescript and manuscript of Brave New World, a presentation copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court signed by Samuel Clemens, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In addition, many individually significant works are included within the collection, including novels and short story anthologies that have garnered professional awards.

How does this particular special collection measure up against similar collections around the country? According to Neil Barron's Anatomy of Wonder, it does fairly well. One would venture to place the University of California at Riverside's Eaton Collection at the top of this imaginary list, with over 65,000 fiction volumes and between 3,000-4,000 critical/reference texts to its credit (740) in addition to its 45,000+ fanzines. It is expanding rapidly, adding over 3,000 items annually, and has issued two publications regarding these holdings in the past decade. The next may be Texas A & M University in College Station, with over 20,000 fiction works and 500+ critical texts in addition to a core collection of pulp magazines and a growing number of foreign publications. The MIT Science Fiction Society Library may well be third on this short list, with over 17,500 fiction volumes and 300+ critical texts. This collection is primarily a circulating collection for the recreational reading of members rather than a pure research-based archive, and it is not an official part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, it is rather ironic that two of these collections are held at major engineering and hard science schools, MIT and Texas A & M.

The University of Texas at Austin's L. W. Currey Collection does not boast the sheer size of many of these collections, although it now contains over 15,000 titles, but for research purposes it has an amazing storehouse of first editions and fanzines[1] for the interested. Culled from L. W. Currey's own bibliography[2] of first-edition science fiction (the original purchase of 3,050 titles was from Currey's personal collection), and with the addition of his annual gifts, his contribution of another 2,700 titles (including Roger Zelazny's fanzine collection), Currey's own interests have given the collection its focus. However, the question remains about the nature of that focus, for if we document a history of male-authored literature without allowing space for women seeking to redraw the boundaries, the purpose of having such an archive has been defeated. If Currey's is to be a representative collection, it clearly needs to do some more representing of women, by acquiring more books from the last decade and by making a greater effort to include all works of important female figures in the genre (to be fair, the Currey has some outstanding holdings for some female authors like Cherryh, Norton and Russ). Of course, one day such holdings may be available on cd-rom or online text (and many contemporary science fiction novels already are), but such information should be the extension of foundational collections like the Currey, not a replacement for them.