I’m still waiting for my new book, Behold!, to be published–we’ve got a paper shortage! Another piece of our national economy that’s not working lately. But there’s another thing that concerns me.
Who’s going to read it?
Is anybody reading anymore? Even blog traffic is down all over, it’s not just me. They’ve gone from not reading books to not reading blog posts. At this rate there’ll be nothing left but HOW RU? And maybe little pictographs to tide us over until writing is re-invented.
The poor Time-Traveller! He wants to know all about the limp, passive Eloi, and they can’t tell him. Finally he asks if they have books. “Oh, yes, we have books.” Huzzah! “Books will tell me what I want to know!” What does he learn from the books that the Eloi have let crumble into dust?
What would our Constitutional Convention have produced, if its delegates–our country’s founders–were all non-readers? No history, no classics, no philosophy… Maybe not even the Bible, although I like to think that would have been the last to go.
Well, we won’t need censorship if the people just stop reading.
Could it be that The Time Machine saw this coming (except that it didn’t take 800k+ years)? That in the future, the well-fed masses would just “dance and play” in ignorance of becoming Morlock food? But, hey, at least the Morlocks produced the things the Eloi needed. The current “consumers” haven’t produced anything at all…
What movie is that from
The Time Machine (1960)–one of my all-time favorites.
I even like the 2002 version of the “Time Machine” with Guy Pearce, but the 1960 movie with Rod Taylor is one of my favorites. Unfortunately, what Taylor experienced with books, is what is happening to my books. The climate here is deteriorating them, quickly, in an awful way. The bindings are cracking, the pages are getting brittle, so sad,…some are like old friends, who I have had for 50 or more years, just crumbling into dust.
I still have some of my favorite 35-cent paperbacks from the 1960s… and have to handle them with care.
We’ll be sure to get ‘Behold!’ as soon as it comes out! Looking forward to reading what happens next.
Still held up by paper shortage…