Fantastic Metropolis

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Forrest Aguirre

Yes. Perhaps it’s the last couple thousand years of human evolution, but reading from the printed page is just plain easier on the eyes than reading from electronic media. There is also a degree of emotional comfort to be derived from the book as object. They remind us that it is healthy to slow down our pacing a bit and enjoy reading, as people used to do. Physical books provide a certain exercise for the brain that is absent when one is hurriedly running through an electronic text trying to save one’s eyes from over straining.

Hawk Alfredson & Mia Hanson

Yes, books need to exist in traditional book form. I don’t feel comfortable with computers. Mia wants to mention that “books are important historical relics of their time. To abolish books would be to abolish not only the art of everything associated with bookmaking, but the silencing of modern culture up to this point in time. The intellect should not be segregated to only the untactile dimensions of hyperspace.”

Neal Asher

Because we like to own things we like. You can’t own data on a screen, and its very impermanence engenders the fear of losing it, and consequently the need for something permanent. This may change, but it shows no sign of doing so yet. There’s the aesthetics as well. We all buy beautiful useless objects to decorate our homes with. How much better to buy beautiful useful objects such as books?

Dale Bailey

Yes. Absolutely yes. They’re the perfect technology—portable, intuitively useful (no instructions required), and they require no power source. And they furnish a room. A house without books doesn’t seem lived in to me.

R. M. Berry

Yes. Even computer images are physical objects. However, there’s a standing question about whether electronic books are books. As it turns out, this is the same question as that of whether or to what extent physical books are books.

K. J. Bishop

I think so. No matter how small and portable computers become, reading texts on screen strains the eyes (well, it strains mine), and even LCD screens aren’t as comfortable as paper. Though for rare and obscure books, having an e-text is a lot better than having no text at all.

Richard Bleiler

Yes. Not everything is digitized. Not everything will be digitized. Not everywhere is wireless accessible. One can do different things with a book (physical object). Not to say that e-texts do not have their uses and places, but it is hard to imagine (say) a collector gloating over his e-texts the way one would gloat over his collection of Arkham House publications. One can throw a book with relative impunity. Not so a computer. One can read a book when the power goes out. (And you city dwellers better believe it does in these rural areas!) A book can be looked upon as a work of art. Art will endure. And so on.

Jonathan Carroll

So we can carry them around and not have to be near an electrical outlet to plug in and read them. There is no greater place in the world to read a book than on a park bench when you have an afternoon to kill.

Jay Caselberg

Yes, I have my treasure cupboard. I cannot carry my treasure cupboard around on my Palm. I do, however, read on my handheld. That’s for portability—the capability to carry around multiple volumes at once. Real world books are for keeping.

Michael Chabon

Duh! Is it necessary for apples to exist as objects in our increasingly artificially flavored world?

Michael Cisco

Yes, because not everyone has access to computers, and because not everyone has asbestos eyes. I hate reading things off screens (but I love crafting long painful-to-read emails for other people). Books are cheap, portable, never run out of power, but more importantly making books is itself an art. I’ve never heard yet any suggestion that paintings on gallery walls be replaced with computer facsimiles hanging on flat screens, or that all music henceforth be created exclusively on computers. Or that all food be cooked on computer screens and eaten by little programs while the user sucks feebly at the keyboard. Our world may be increasingly electronic, but it might become decreasingly electronic in the future; and nowhere is it written that everyone everywhere will eventually have computer access. Scrapping books would be like insisting everyone live underground—expensive and pointless.

Brendan Connell

Absolutely. For me, it is impossible to read more than a page or two in an electronic format. I like to read lying down on the couch, in parks, poised on mountainous crags, in airplanes, cars, and cafes.