In three connected vignettes, Cory Doctorow descibes the future of books for the next 150 years. It was written for The Bookseller’s 150th anniversary (wow!) and is mainly a thought experiment, but even so, Doctorow manages to squeeze in some great character moments and observations.
He posits that the only way for books to survive into the future is to get new generations of readers interested in them but that doesn’t work anymore through the old channels. His solution is a hybrid between collaborative writing, an ARG and DIY hand-crafted anthologies. Like most of Doctorow’s ideas, it sounds very plausible and only a few minutes away from our time.
