A 95-year-old Winnipeg man is donating an enormous collection of science fiction items spanning more than 80 years of publication to the University of Alberta.

Chester Cuthbert, 95, said he picked up science fiction books whenever he had a few dollars to spare.
(CBC)

Chester Cuthbert has amassed a collection of more than 60,000 books and magazines since he began collecting as a youth in the 1920s.

"I've always collected them since I've been able to get a few dollars," he said Wednesday, as movers packed boxes in his home.

"Whenever I've had money, I've bought books."

He had one of the largest private collections of material related to science fiction, fantasy and psychic phenomena in Canada.

It will take about 100 pallets in three semi-trailers to haul the books and magazines, which have an estimated value of about $1 million, to the University of Alberta.

More than 60,000 books, magazines and letters from Chester Cuthbert's sci-fi collection are being shipped from his Winnipeg home to the University of Alberta.
(CBC)

"These were published in small numbers and are quite scarce and valuable, hard to locate, and he had assembled nearly complete runs of all of these," said Merrill Distad, director of libraries at the University of Alberta.

"The collection also includes his correspondence files with many of the pioneering publishers and authors of that 'first fandom era,' people like Hugo Gernsback, Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian."

Distad has been acquainted with Cuthbert for about 10 years, and describes him as "modest and unassuming."

But the collector is a "central figure in the development of science fiction as a literary genre in Canada," Distad said.