RIVERSIDE >> At one time, it was every geek’s worst nightmare: Come back from college, or even summer camp, and Mom has thrown or given away a beloved collection of dog-eared science fiction and fantasy novels.

Oakland physician J. Lloyd Eaton beat the odds.

In 1969, his estate bequeathed his collection of 7,500 hardback editions of science fiction, fantasy and horror books published between the late 19th century and 1955.

But Eaton’s collection looked as though it might end up getting split up.

“No library was taking science fiction intact, much less in special collections,” UC Riverside head of special collections Melissa Conway said.

But at UC Riverside, the collection found a champion, in librarian Donald Wilson, who arranged for the collection to find a permanent home in Riverside’s Tomas Rivera Library.

“His feeling was that if no one was collecting science fiction, but everyone’s reading it, one day, scholars will want to study these,” Conway said.

Today, the Eaton Collection has grown to more than 100,000 works, along with another 200,000 items.

“So it’s grown more than 10 times” in the intervening 45 years, Conway said.

The collection is regularly visited by scholars and readers wanting to get a glimpse into the history of genres that, until recently, got relatively little respect. The university holds regularly scholarly conferences looking at science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Beyond works like the 1517 edition of Thomas Moore’s Utopia, taped interviews with American, British and French authors, Japanese manga comics and anime cartoons, the collection also includes relatively little-discussed feminist science fiction and fantasy from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which were until recently sidelined by scholarly discussions in favor of male voices.

“We’ve collected things that no one else has collected, so we are the only sources for some of these texts,” Conaway said.

Much of the credit for the growth of the collection and the scholarly attention it has received belongs to the late George Edgar Slusser, who joined the library in 1979 and was the curator for the Eaton Collection. He championed it during years when few in academia took the collection seriously.

“George had a hard fight all his life, he really did,” Conaway said. “I think people are taking it a lot more seriously (now).”

Conaway herself changed her attitude toward the genres represented in the collection over time, after first being something of a skeptic.

“I became very appreciative and admiring of it,” she said.

It took the university’s 2006 Eaton Conference on science fiction and fantasy scholarship to open her eyes.

“I finally understood George’s passion for science fiction,” she said. “The different ways that science fiction had anticipated the future. Not just the gadgets, but the dystopias,” and other visions of how we live today. “I really saw what a treasure it was.”

The collection is open to the public Mondays through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Note that special restrictions apply to visitors coming into contact with materials in the Special Collections Reading Room.

For more information, call 951-827-3233.