Dale Dalenberg, M.D.

 

Dale is an orthopedic surgeon based in Ottawa, Kansas and an obsessive bibliophile. A lifelong enthusiast for vintage books and literature, like many boys of his generation, he was weaned on TV episodes of “Lost in Space” and the novels of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. He started collecting paperbacks in the early 1970s when they were about 75 cents. This includes his very first purchase from a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

Dale remains an avid collector to this day, amassing a collection of some 600 antique dime novels, over 3,000 comic books, several rooms full of paperbacks, pulp magazines, CD's, DVD's & Blu-Rays, vinyl records, and stacks of hardcovers, including some notable first editions and a large number of fine Folio Society releases. He is particularly interested in the evolution of popular fiction from the dime novel to its direct descendants, the pulp magazine, the comic book and the modern paperback.

Dale began writing regularly about what he calls "antique popular literature" in the form of regular newsletters to friends and family (mostly to convince his children that there was worthwhile art being produced ere they were born) before being encouraged by his son Alexander to take his scribblings to the Web. He also blogs on various and sundry other aspects of popular culture, including film, art, & music, plus his own theories of art criticism.