Left anonymously on the Book Exchange shelf.

This book is available on the Book Exchange shelf in the pantry in room 9C68 of the Knox Building (USPTO employees and authorized visitors only - this area is not open to the general public).

Okay, I couldn't resist. A book published in 1989 (while I was still in college) that predicts the whole eBook concept? You know I've got to read this!

Now that we exist in a world where electronic books (and the devices to read them) have become widely available and used, it is interesting to look back at what the reaction of the publishing industry might have been to the very idea of paperless books. The e-book (as we’ve come to call them) has lived up to its promise of reducing the costs of books and expanding the selection of titles available, as projected in the novel. But it is easy to see how e-readers and the internet have cut into the sales of physical books and even more deeply into the sales of newspapers and magazines. So the opposition of those whose jobs depend on the distribution of such paper books to the very idea of virtual books is entirely understandable and predictable, as happens in the book.
But this book is *SO* much more than an prediction regarding the impact of electronic books and the reactions to them. It is a biting parody of the entire publishing industry, taking serious stabs at the editorial decision making that allows mediocre writers to become (and remain) best sellers, while beautifully written books never get published. It portrays the publishing world almost like an alternate reality, with rules that seem to defy conventional logic, and where books succeed or fail not because they are good or bad, but because they are expected to succeed or fail.
Combine all of that with a series of mysterious murders and a desperate writer who will stop at nothing to see his book published, and you end up with a climactic scene that is almost crazy enough to have been written by Monty Python!
As science-fiction, this ‘near-future’ story is a little hit-or-miss, providing some plausible projections, but completely missing in other areas (for example, magnetic levitation trains have not become widely adopted, and don’t look likely to be anytime soon). But in many ways, the projections here are less about trying to predict the future as they seem to be about providing social commentary, and in that sense they work well, lampooning society and culture right along with the publishing industry. There wasn’t a lot of deep content here, but it was a satisfyingly entertaining diversion.

Passing along at today's BC-in-DC gathering in Baltimore.

What? Books you can buy from home, delivered to you electronically? Books that are not made of paper? In the 1980s, when this was written, e-books were a futuristic, science-fiction-y concept. It'll be fun to see how much Bova accurately predicted.

I caught this one at the BC-DC meetup in Baltimore over the weekend.

A silly, fun read!

I'm bringing this to release at a conference of journalists, authors, and other writers.

I'm leaving this one on a table in the hotel lobby.

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