RIGHT OUT OF SCIENCE-FICTION : DONATION TO LIBRARY DRAWS BUFFS, THOSE SEEKING LOST YOUTH.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

Library volunteer Karen Gabriel had never seen anything quite like it - box after box filled with 25,000 science-fiction paperbacks jammed into stacks of boxes.

The coordinator of the Friends of the Simi Valley Library's used bookstore said she had only one thought when she saw the donation from an unknown donor: ``Where are we going to put them?''

Yet in the four weeks since, word has made its way through the science-fiction aficionado grapevine and a flurry of buyers have appeared at the library, looking for their favorite from Robert Heinlein or Robert E. Howard.

``They're thrilled,'' she said. ``They know we have the science-fiction books - but they don't realize how many we have.''

Gabriel estimates the library received more than 30 boxes stuffed with the paperbacks - many first editions - amounting to 25,000 or so volumes, she said.

``If anybody is a science-fiction collector, this is absolutely the best place in the world to come right now,'' she said.

Buyers include the owners of Dangerous Visions science-fiction and fantasy bookstore in Sherman Oaks, where customers come to seek hard-to-find titles and authors.

Because rare and hard-to-find paperbacks are not nearly as valuable as hardback books, the volumes in the collection are prized more for their literary worth or sentimental value than they are for their monetary value, said store manager Arthur Cover.

``If they love what the words say - that's really it,'' Cover said. ``Some people reread old science-fiction to relive their youth. Some want to see if they were as good as they thought it was. And sometimes they read them to get a new perspective.''

The books, which can be picked up at the Simi Valley Library for 50 cents each, will be sold at Dangerous Visions for $1.50 to $6, Cover said.

Large donations from single donors are not unheard of at area libraries. For example, a North Hollywood used bookstore owner turned over tens of thousands of paperbacks and hardbacks of every category to the Thousand Oaks Library in 1994, said Barb Wilson, a member of the Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library.

Books from these donations that weren't put on the library's shelves were sold by the Friends. These sales help the Friends raise money for programs not funded by the city - and can help raise more than $20,000 each year, Wilson said.

``The book sales are really our biggest fund-raiser,'' she said. ``It's been a steady income and the thing that is unusual about used-book sales is that it's almost 100 percent profit.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Ran in Conejo, Simi and SAC--color in Conejo and Simi only) Along a center aisle at the Simi Valley Library sits a line of donated science-fiction books, 25,000 all told.

(2--Ran in Conejo, Simi and SAC--color in Conejo and Simi only) A lone donor named Miller gave the Simi Valley Library tens of thousands of science-fiction paperbacks, now being picked up by collectors and admirers of the genre.

Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News