A Special Offering
by Collier Brown

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Before saying more about the books themselves, a few lines about Fuller and his accomplishments are in order. Curiously enough, in a store primarily dedicated to engineering and the applied sciences, it's a bit odd to have Fuller's books here at all. Unlike Timoshenko in mechanical engineering, von Karman in aerodynamics or von Neumann in mathematics, Fuller wrote no seminal treatises in pure technology which must be read by students in those areas. By contrast, Fuller was the consummate generalist. Best known for his development of the geodesic dome (actually invented by an engineer at the Carl Zeiss company in Jena, Germany), Fuller's interests and researches ranged almost infinitely. Architecture, energy, interactive systems, auto design, geometry, philosophy, poetry — very little escaped his imagination.

He published a great deal; he is a still household name; and the world wide web contains literally thousands of pages about him. As a generalist, then, in a world of towering specialists, the question remains — what did he really achieve? Without claiming any special authority beyond a close look at his books and life, the answer that occurs to us is his amazingly successful advocacy of scientific and technological environmentalism.

At the beginning of the 21st century, now that we're surrounded by recycling tubs, environmental use permits, biodiesel fuel, and recycled pavements (and secondhand books!), it's hard to imagine how little of this was part of public thinking 110 years ago when Richard Buckminster Fuller was born. John Muir, of course, had founded the Sierra Club three years earlier, but its goal tended to be the absence of technology rather than its development in human and planet-friendly ways. It was eventually left to Fuller, then, to bring those latter concepts to the public.

He did this first by transforming himself from Richard B. Fuller into "Bucky." He then developed his own vocabulary to get people's attention and jolt them from traditional thought patterns — synergetics, geodesic, tensegrity, dymaxion, "Spaceship Earth," "One-Town World." Finally, through his writings, innovative designs, speeches and other public appearances, he made his ideas part of the public discourse — primarily of enhancing human life through ecologically-friendly technology derived from nature and sympathetic with the planet and the universe. For perhaps the first time in history, "Less is more" became a significant alternative to rampant consumption. By the time of his death in 1983, Fuller had not only succeeded in developing a true non-theological moral imperative for engineering in the years to come, but had managed to spread those ideas widely enough to change our thinking and our lives — no mean accomplishment!

Fortunately for collectors of Fuller or more casual readers, most of his books enjoyed wide circulation and large printings. Consequently, with a few exceptions, these books are not difficult to find or very costly. In keeping with Fuller's self-made role as an "Idea" rather than "Detail" person, most of the larger books are co-authored and some others consist of interviews. This collection includes Fuller's first published book, Nine Chains to the Moon, his last, Humans in Universe, and a goodly number in between. Of particular interest are also three titles by Martha Bolles and Rochelle Newman concerned with geometry and nature which, we're sure, Fuller would have loved. We (and, in some cases, the publishers) have tried to provide a few notes on each title and physical descriptions as well. We hope you will enjoy looking at these, either in person or virtually. Should you have questions about any of these items, feel free to come to our store or contact this writer at collier.brown@powells.com. Enjoy, and welcome to Bucky's world.

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