Science-fiction writer Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907–1975) believed that rocks were books. His controversial stories about an advanced prehistoric civilization and a race of evil beings living at the center of the earth appeared in Amazing Stories and other landmark sci-fi publications of the 1940s and '50s. A decade later he was living in relative isolation and devoting himself to rock book research, a course of study that he shared with a devoted fan base of students and correspondents. Richard Sharpe Shaver: Some Stones are Ancient Books contains a generous selection of Shaver’s Rokfogos, that is to say, rock-book documentation, accompanied by hand-typed texts in which he explains, not always patiently, what can be seen in these rocks. Also included are facsimiles of his handmade books and publications, all of which he felt to be of incalculable importance to civilization.