mcgrew's Journal: A Yank Back to the Past

I was yanked three and a half decades back today, and Rority had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Two things from the past reached thirty five years into the future and snagged me for their apparent enjoyment. They were books.

The first was Pratchett's Strata. I'd ordered a hold at the library over the internet, and when the librarian handed me the book, my reaction was "wow, skinny book." It was no longer than Nobots, which is only 2042 words past the line between a novel and novella.

The story itself didn't yank me back in time, the actual book itself did. It was old. The pages were even yellowing. It was obvious they had purchased this book when it was first released in 1981; at least, that was the year the copyright was registered. I found it odd that Pratchett didn't hold the copyright.

There was the then ubiquitous envelope glued to the inside cover that you just don't see today, because today they're not needed; they're anachronisms. See, those of you younger than thirty can't possibly fathom what it was like, any more than I can fathom the wonder and excitement my grandmother felt when she saw her first airplane at age eight. Grandma was a few months older than powered human flight, being born in 1903.

The envelope was necessary to hold the card, and to tell the truth I don't clearly remember how it worked. But it made me think of the card catalog, and how computers have changed everything. They used to have a card for each book on the shelf in a smallish wooden filing cabinet (this was every library I was ever in, and I was in a lot of them; I'm addicted to reading, particularly nonfiction) and a slip in the envelope contained the names and/or card numbers (you need a library card to check out a book, even today). When you checked a book out, and like I said I might be misremembering this, they would keep the slip and store it with the card from the catalog in a separate case only librarians could access.

Today, of course, there is no card catalog. It's not needed, computers are so much better. Also, as far as I know there were no interlibrary loans. At least, that I knew of then.

Either losses from theft were horrendous, or people are a hell of a lot less honest today because back then, they didn't have those things that scream when you walk out of a store without paying, that they also use in libraries today.

When I returned it today I noticed the ISBN on the back had no bar code. I could have sworn bar codes were older than that, but I guess I was wrong. Just wait, you millennial who is laughing. What was it like when you were two years old. Can't remember?

They were having their annual book sale today, I noticed.

I had reserved another Pratchett title over the internet the day before yesterday, but it wasn't behind the desk yet. So I wander over to the new science fiction, hoping to see Nobots but knowing I wouldn't because I just looked in the "card catalog" on the internet and searched for it by ISBN. But I did see the magic name Pratchett. Along with a co-author named Stephen Baxter. The title was The Long War. Copyright last year. I haven't started reading it yet.

I went up the elevator and had a polite discussion with a young man on the third floor about the two copies of Nobots I had donated a month ago and was assured would be cataloged and put on the shelf, and I walked outside. The books for sale were dirt cheap, two bucks for hardcovers that looked brand new, a buck for full sized paperbacks and fifty cents for smaller paperbacks. One caught my eye, a big, fat paperback book. The illiterate in Wagons, East! who asked the gay bookseller to sell him a "big damned book" would have been pleased with it. It was titled The Writer's Manual and looking at the chapters listed on the back, it looked helpful. So I gave the lady a dollar, went home, and started reading.

The first chapter concerned the tools of writing. These tools included typewriters, carbon paper... WTF? I looked at the copyright date: 1979. This thing must have been in a warehouse for the last three decades. If I had taken a writing class in college, what I had learned would have been completely obsolete by the time I would have needed the knowledge; it's as useful as the vacuum tubes and analog circuits I learned as a teenager. Which is no use at all.

What wasn't obsolete was, as they would say across the pond, bleeding obvious.

How times change... it spoke of publishers' budgets, and how publishers wanted shorter books because printing was expensive and spoke of "one 80,000 word book, or two 40,000 word books?" with the assumption that the publisher would rather publish the two smaller, and trying to publish a big novel wasn't a good idea at all.

Baen won't accept anything shorter than 100,000 words.

Oh, well, it was only a buck. I wonder what I should do with it?