Fantastic Metropolis

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Kathe Koja

“Necessary?” I don’t know. I grew up loving books, I live in a forest of them, I can’t imagine my life without them. And for sheer convenience, cost, etc., it will be hard to beat a paperback as—what?—an idea delivery system? But my son’s generation seems to prefer to read things on screen. So how necessary it will be to them is maybe the heart of the question.

Jay Lake

Maybe not for our children and grandchildren, but for us, for now, yes. The physiology of reading from a reflective surface (paper) is very different than the physiology of reading from a luminous surface (a screen). If a human learned to read on screen and did the majority of his or her early reading on a screen (not ideas I favor, by the way), then an electronic book is the most natural object for them. For the rest of us, print books are the natural object, e-books an object of convenience. Note that the advent of “smart paper,” already in limited availability, will significantly blur this distinction. In effect, you could own one book, and it would be any book you needed it to be.

David Langford

Yes. Because I don’t like reading long texts on a screen. Or, indeed, lugging a laptop into the bathroom on the occasion of some long, contemplative bowel movement.

Tanith Lee

Naturally. We are three-dimensional physical beings ourselves, and need our kindred close.

Des Lewis

From a personal point of view, I cannot read fiction for long on a screen. Indeed, irrespective of the physical discomfort, the text acts differently, inferiorly, when not on paper. Indeed, the text is different, even if it uses exactly the same words and same font. And not only the text, but the meaning of that text! Also, the text’s provenance is missing when on a screen; and the sense that the text as paper-borne will populate all manner of human habitation and weathering, and be exchanged and live as long as the span of the planet itself, reflects back on the text itself and makes it what it is, changes it into what it truly should have been all along. Provenance is “old-fashioned,” in the true sense of that. Text on screens is here today, gone tomorrow, but okay for fast-changing facts and conversational communication.

Nick Mamatas

Yes. The real world has a better resolution than any screen. Half the people on the planet, including my grandmother who lives atop a little mountain on an island in the Aegean, have never received a telephone call. A bookshelf, or even tastier, a book pile, won’t suddenly shimmer and vanish into the nether realms the way data on hard drives do far too often. The Patriot Act does not apply to the space between page and eye. How many floppy discs from 20 years ago still work? How many books still work? It’s no contest, base matter wins.

Javier A. Martinez

I think so. It is difficult to conceive of a world that is paper-free, especially when it comes to books. Aside from the fact that I read better when there is a page in front of me, I think some of the personal aspect is lost when we read on-line or e-texts. Of course, I’m a product of the print world, so I’m naturally going to gravitate toward printed products. Ask a kid in his teens and you’d probably get a much different answer. One of the strong points of e-texts is hyperlinks. They are an excellent teaching tool and can really deepen your appreciation of the text. I like books, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time until they become an antiquated indulgence for the old farts we’ll one day become.

Farah Mendlesohn

Reading in the bath.

Michael Moorcock

I don’t know about “necessary,” but they are still very portable and useful. They require no batteries or power source and are usually available in quantity, costing relatively little to replace. Storage is a problem. I bought my present house because it has very high ceilings and I could install a library into the largest room, with shelves reaching high above me. Even then, most of those shelves are double stacked. This means that I now have to sell my books with my house or go through the trauma of repacking them and storing them somewhere, since I have no need or desire for a larger house. Would I like most of these books on disk? I think the answer’s yes. Would they give me the same physical pleasure? Of course not. I suspect that the emergence of the book as a work of art, as in the case of Savoy and others, is in response to the availability of electronic reading material. This suggests that the book will continue to be bought, alongside other methods of delivery!