author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

As predicted, today contained 1) slight irritations that 2) were heavily outweighed by wonderful things¹. There were plenty more wonderful things.

I bought lots of books, most of them from the hands of their authors who of course signed them for me. Many of these authors were personal friends/acquaintances whom I only get to see face-to-face at cons like this. And while I was wandering the mass signing, Mort Castle hailed me. I hadn't realized he was here this year; I hadn't seen his usual writing workshop on the program. I was very pleased to see him, and he me. He is a skilled, emotionally evocative writer; a talented teacher; and just an overwhelmingly kind person.

I visited the art show and bought a print of this gorgeous painting by Steven C. Gilberts: an illustration for Simon Clark's novella "Butterfly." I have not yet read the novella, but I do get an inkling of deep sadness underlying the image, a sense of great works which require the sacrifice of self while fueling machines of destruction. But, on an admittedly superficial level, the visual elements of a dreaming/concentrating woman, a sky full of airplanes, and long hair that's getting caught in the gears reminds me of myself.

I got to have dinner with con friends and with seldom-seen family all at the same time, and then continue to spend time with said family member for hours afterwards. "It's been too long since we just hung out like this," I said. Then, "Not that we ever really did hang out like this. What's up with that? We should do it more often."

I went on an entirely unnecessary quest for a credit union ATM, walking at least a mile to avoid whatever small fee the ones within a block of the hotel would have charged. I think I must have had the intent all along to catch the brand! New! Street car on Loyola! (squee!) and ride it from the train station to the French Quarter. This is how I show the Universe my appreciation for the nice things in its catalog of things.

And every panel I went to ignited little sparks in my brain about stories I'm working on and what hitherto-unimagined things I could do with them.

Wonderfulness everywhere!

But what I'd really like to comment on today is an opinion I've heard from several panelists these past two days. The opinion goes something like this:

Ebooks are the future, and the future will be ebooks. Exclusively. This object, this physical book, will no longer be made. All there will be is a screen on your living room wall or in your hand and the internet connection by which you download stories to it. Do yourself and your career a favor: accept that this will be the case and prepare yourself for it.

I heard this said almost verbatim at two different panels, and at both with a certain degree of gleeful anticipation. And it bothered me.

It didn't just bother me because I think it's untrue--though I do think it's untrue, unlikely, and patently unworkable. The codex format has been with us for centuries, and books preserved from centuries before ours can still be read now and will be readable in the future without need for electricity (assuming daylight or a fire-based light source) nor concern for hardware-, software-, or backwards-compatibility. And it's not like humans are going to just stop making paper and binding books; and if we keep doing that, we're going to keep selling the results.

It didn't just bother me because I think it's undesirable aesthetically--though I do think it's aesthetically undesirable. I like the object that is the physical book. My traveling companion from the Denver-to-Chicago train ride said that she loves her Kindle, but she misses the kinethetic sense of where she is in the book. This many pages in, about a third of the way down the page on the left--this is a physical location that helps give the story shape in her mind. Losing that translates to a certain sense of being lost; it affects the very experience of story. I think I know what she means; certainly there is a decreased intimacy in my recollection of books I've read exclusively in ePub form (or have had read to me, for that matter).

But it bothered me primarily because I think it's unkind.

Listen: some of these people I heard, they spoke about being able to relax with an ebook on your phone or e-reader when you're tired of reading things on your computer. As though people like me, who have neither smartphone nor e-reader, do not exist. Which bugs me--damn straight it bugs me. But people like me with our flip-phones or no cell phone at all, no Kindles or Nooks or whatever, can still download ebooks to our computers, right? We have computers. We're privileged. We're people who can afford computers, smartphones, e-readers, gizmos that require non-trivial up-front monetary capital and electricity to make them work. They require a place to keep them, a place to charge them, frequent or constant internet connection to download books and and software upgrades, and the wherewithal to maintain or replace them when they start to break down.

Think of people who can't afford that. Who can't afford an e-reader, who can't pay the electric bill reliably each month, who maybe don't even have homes. Are we predicting--gleefully, joyously, or jadedly--a future in which written stories will be inaccessible to them?

Do we really want literacy to be the exclusive province of the privileged?

I'm not against ebooks. I quite like them. They're not going away anytime soon, and I expect to see improvements in their form and format every year. But they exist in addition to, not as a replacement for, physical writing and physical books. They will never--they must never--force the physical book into extinction.

I want my stories printed on paper and bound on shelves in bookstores, new and used. Available in libraries. Hidden among other books in the 25-cent basket out in front of the thrift store. Piled up in garage sales. Shared hand-to-hand between friends and via "leave a book, take a book" shelves in public spaces. Given away for free. Devoured during a long night hiding from the cold in a church or at the local homeless shelter. Accessible to all, those who have never touched a computer as well as those who have never known a life without.

If reading is worth fighting for, then so are physical books.

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¹ Hell, the most memorable slight irritation in fact led directly to one of the wonderful things. To wit: "That Guy" ignores my telling him, several times, firmly but pleasantly, that I don't appreciate being treated as though my every personal action were on display for his entertainment and loud commentary. Please stop it. When I finally tell him so in a manner that cannot be mistaken for pleasant, he gets the message, but complains to anyone who'll listen that I yelled at him. Other Guy Who Is Emphatically Not "That Guy" witnesses this and invites me into a very satisfying conversation about boundary-setting and its social challenges. We also end up talking about our con experiences, our writing, and festivals in Chicago. We totally intend to email each other later on. See? A wonderful thing. (back)