The Story of the Travelling Amber Eyed Book (Eyes of Amber and Other Stories, by Joan d. Vinge).
I've never been one to worry about loaning out books. It's not that I've never been stung. I once lost a beautiful book about the biology of cats; stunning photos, well written and researched with excellent source references. I'll never be able to find it again and it was a gift. Would I, if I got that book back, loan it out again? Yes.
There are exceptations to my 'loan to all' policy; people who have repeatedly treated my books badly and then returned them. However, there are friends who hold onto my books for many months or even years, but they always return home eventually. Would it ever be worth missing out on the joy of sharing books, just to remove the risk of losing the occasional book? No.
Eyes of Amber was a book I didn't know I had lost. Perhaps if you don't have a room full of books you might not understand how this can happen. It has happened to me on more than one occasion. However, whenever they finally come home, there is a little sigh of relief from the unconscious part of my brain that knew about the book's absence. Thank goodness for good friends.
One good friend had loaned Eyes of Amber from me just before I moved interstate. The book had originally cost me all of about a dollar and, from memory, was a book that we had both discovered together in one of our favourite second-hand book haunts.
I was settled and had moved house a second time, when a package arrived for me in the mail. I love getting packages of any sort on any given day and this package, even more excitingly, looked vaguely book-shaped.
Of course, there's no secret here, it was Eyes of Amber. My beautiful friend had found it after she had been re-organising her bookshelves and uncovered a book that she didn't recognise. She promptly re-read the book - of course, woudn't we all - headed down to the local post office and sent it travelling across the country, home to me.
Eyes of Amber is a well remembered and loved story, a love exceeded only by my love for the book that holds the tale.
"For several years I was the token "female hard-science fiction writer" in Analog, which was (and still is) the most technologically oriented of the science fiction magazines. ... "Eyes of Amber", won the 1977 Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novelette."
- Joan d. Vinge (Biography)