Reading Backwards is John Crowley’s first collection of non-fiction since In Other Words was published in 2007. This book reflects a range of interests, both literary and otherwise.

The volume opens with the autobiographical “My Life in the Theater,” a memoir of the younger Crowley’s earliest ambitions, and closes with “Practicing the Arts of Peace.” In between, the author offers more than thirty essays.

The opening section, A Voice from the Easy Chair, reflects Crowley’s tenure as Easy Chair columnist for Harper’s Magazine. Subjects include life under the once omni-present threat of the Selective Service Board, the enduring personal importance of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and thoughts on what it means to be truly well read.

The second section, Fictional Voices, contains commentary on a wide range of books and writers, among them SF writers such as Paul Park, Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Disch; the historical novelist David Stacton (a model for the fictional Ffellowes Kraft of the Ægypt novels); and classic science fiction novels of the 1950s.

The final section, Looking Outward, Looking In, ranges across a variety of subjects and ideas, such as UFO literature, the utopian architecture of Norman Bel Geddes, the life and career of theosophist Helena Blavatsky, and the nature of time.