h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello folks! I would like to speak a bit about 'learning'. I've always loved learning. I find the world we live in fascinating! After all, this website, h2g2, is about 'Life, the Universe and Everything'. That's pretty much what I am interested in! In my youth, my interest started with animals. I learnt to read before going to school, and was already a fairly avid reader by the time I was six. Most of my first books were about animals.

There were of course children's story books featuring animal characters, which I always loved! One of the very first books I had was about a little bear cub. Then there were Richard Scarry's books with his delightful animal characters, in 'human' situations, and with lots and lots of things illustrated so as to teach vocabulary! The first of Richard Scarry's books I got when I was just three. I loved them and took great care of them and I still have all of them, in fairly good condition, though having been read countless times over more than three decades.

Oh - and the Richard Scarry books I have, are all translated into Afrikaans. I've recently used them to teach a German lady and her young daughter a bit of Afrikaans vocabulary.

The there were the fables of La Fontaine ... another book I got very early in my life; then a story about a little pig; a story named 'Ben and the Green Turtle'; a story about a fly followed by a whole series of other animals all running scared because of a little lamb with a rusty bucket on its leg; and many other books. I had books of fairy tales; books of myths and legends; folk tales from South Africa, elsewhere in Africa and all over the world; wonderful children's stories by Afrikaans writers ... I loved them all.

But ... even from a very young age ... I also was interested in non-fiction. Again, starting with animals. My father worked as a librarian in the library of the University of Pretoria. He brought some books from the reference section home to me to look at and read. There were for instance books about dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. There was also a huge encyclopedia of several volumes, the Grzimek Animal Encyclopedia (in German ... and I actually learnt a few German words from it ... but I mostly looked at the pictures). My parents also bought me several animal encyclopedias ... first, children's encyclopedias, but later, complete reference encyclopedias. My dad also won a wonderful animal encyclopedia by taking part in a game show on television here in South Africa ... a 'test your knowledge' sort of game show, on which he did very well. Well, he was a librarian, so he had a great general knowledge!

At any rate: animal encyclopedias; books about specific groups of animals ... bears ... frogs ... birds ... dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures ... these I read and by the time I was seven, I already had a very good idea of the natural world: the different natural environments such as deserts, savannahs, forests and rainforests, the oceans and the arctic and antarctic ice 'wastes' ... and about the different groups of living animals AS WELL AS their prehistory - where they came from, how they evolved, and when and how long it all took, and all the things that used to exist but are extinct now.

As for fiction, I soon developed a taste for science fiction. I also liked 'adventure' stories, such as of the exploration of the African landscape and wildlife, like 'Jock of the Bushveld' and other stories. But science fiction stories had a particular effect on me, since they introduced the idea to me that things could be very different from the way they are at the moment. The future might be very, very different indeed. Also, no one exactly knows what the future would hold ... the possibilities seem endless. Then there's also the idea that there might be ... and I would now say there probably is ... life on other planets, maybe even intelligent life, but that life would be very, very different from what we have here. Science fiction stimulated my thought and imagination ... I still read it, perhaps not as voraciously as when I was young, but do read it now and then ... I've recently again read some of the stories of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, both of whom have had some very interesting ideas.

I certainly think science fiction ... and other kinds of fiction as well ... are also relevant to the topic of 'learning' about the world in which we live. One can read fiction merely to relax ... but every work of fiction actually has hundreds or thousands of bits of information, some of which may be imaginary - but still of value, as creative and stimulating imaginings, but others that tell something of value about the world, or about people.

OK ... I'll post this now but I'd like to continue it into a next entry ...

... OK to continue:

Another source of stimulation was reading magazines! When I was very young there was a magazine for children called 'Bollie'. Bollie was a bunny and there was a cartoon strip about him and his family, that ran in each issue, but 'Bollie' also contained many other cartoons, many serial stories in cartoon form, or other stories that were mostly written with few illustrations (folk tales, fairy tales and the like) and 'fun' pages with images to copy and to colour. My parents initially read the magazine to me but when I learnt to read I read it myself from front to back. It is very interesting to me thinking back now that this magazine was directed at children of pre-school age, or children just entering school. I don't know of any similar magazine being currently published. 'Bollie' kept being published here in South Africa into the late seventies, but then ... and this is interesting, more or less when television began here ... it stopped. 'Bollie' gave me an enormous amount of intellectual stimulation at an age when I was very receptive to it. A little thing like that, can make a huge difference. Remember I'm talking about when I was three to six or seven years old.

Another magazine was 'Die Huisgenoot'. This magazine, initially, was published on quite large pages and with good photos and illustrations. 'Die Huisgenoot' had articles on anything and everything. There were lots of information of a scientific nature. There were articles about research, exploration and discoveries. There were stories about interesting people and events. Every issue contained information as well as entertainment, and also articles provoking thought. I started reading 'Die Huisgenoot' when I started reading. Thinking back, I learnt a lot of the world from it. I learnt about other countries, about history. Unfortunately as time passed, 'Die Huisgenoot' became more focused on 'sensation'. There was lots of gossip about hollywood stars, lots of scandals and so forth. But there were still sections aimed at children ... in fact, a reduced version of 'Bollie' continued as a part of the 'adult' magazine.

I remember specifically some of the things that fascinated me when as a child I read 'Die Huisgenoot'. Apart from animals and nature, I became very fascinated with things like UFO's, ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the paranormal. There were lots of articles in the magazine dealing with those. I also developed a rather morbid fascination with evil. I was grimly captivated by stories of murders and murderers, of war, of all the wrongs and horrors of our world. As a child (and remember, I'm talking of myself when I was only five to seven years old) I was confronted with things that shocked me and that I found difficult to deal with, and I tried in ways to come to terms with it. I believe this may have given my later mental problems an early start.

I became acquainted with various libraries in Pretoria, the town where I was born. There was the University library where my dad worked; there were Pretoria's town library; there was at least one suburban library I can remember; and then there was the library of the primary school I attended. Each one had different 'nice' books: stories as well as factual information. My parents encouraged and supported me in taking out and reading books.

When we came to Pietersburg at the end of 1980, my dad became a lecturer at the Unversity of the North, and my mom was a librarian in the Pietersburg municipal library. A new library to get to know! The Pietersburg Library is quite complete ... there is fascinating stuff in there and I've learnt a huge amount of interesting things thanks to it. It also has the Grzimek Animal Encyclopedia I loved so much from the University of Pretoria's library, but this one is in English! I was taking out many children's story books, but at that stage I was already reading adults' books as well (in 1980 I was 8 years old). I read lots of science fiction, and also started reading 'big' novels, particularly those of Stephen King! My parents never minded that I read 'horror'. I honestly don't think reading horror did me mental harm ... it was a way to deal with horror, and at any rate ... what happened in the real world was always worse. I was never disturbed by horror novels the way I was disturbed by reading of real-life horrors in magazines or newspapers.

To continue ... Pietersburg's library has a great selection of books and encyclopedias about nature and wildlife and I absorbed those. It also had books of the mysterious things that I was spellbound by ... UFO's, 'hidden' beasts and the paranormal ... and my interest in those things, at that age, had a very particular effect on me: making me very openminded ... perhaps *too* openminded ... willing to believe almost anything. The world seemed to me a place that is still very much *unknown* ... there were hidden mysteries and wonders out there ... and a lot that 'science' did not understand.

But mainstream science interested me equally. This interest became stronger when I grew older ... my teenage years and later.

There is one source of instruction I must also mention. My parents were always very religious and my religious upbringing also started when I was very young. I always went to church with my parents, as a baby first, and when I was one or two I sat with them in the pews, quietly listening to the preacher. The Bible was read to me ... a 'children's Bible' when I was very young, but soon the Bible proper. I learnt the psalms and many of the stories off by heart. When I started reading I started reading the Bible too. When I was in primary school I read the Bible a lot. I also read *about* the Bible, about religion ... and here there was a pernicious influence that also started when I was very young: a preoccupation with 'The End Times'. The Book of Revelations seemed to me to predict very horrible events, and I always had the impression they would start within my own lifetime - soon, very soon. The 'End Times' stuff also meshed in a way with the horrible events in the world I read about in newspapers and magazines. I read pamphlets and magazines predicting very specific things; what I learnt about communism, seemed to me to indicate that the communists were the soldiers of Satan and that the 'Anti-Christ' would probably come from that quarter. I read about how communists would brainwash people; how religion would be outlawed; how christians would be tortured and killed unless they abjured their faith ... which if they did, they would lose their souls and go to hell. This is the stuff I read, over and over, as a child ...

More to come ...