Encouraging words from author Orson Scott Card

from the Column, "Uncle Orson Reviews Everything"�, December 13, 2007

"Twelve Days, Laugh-In and Art Prints"�

by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game, Empire, and dozens of other novels)

in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2007-12-13-168807.112113-Twelve_Days_LaughIn_and_Art_Prints.html

"Sometimes I look around at the thousands of books in my house and feel sad. About a thousand of them are reference books that we use for research. The rest are books I saved with the intention of reading them again.

"Only now I'm 56 years old and I can see 'barely, if I squint' the handwriting on the wall. I'm not going to read them all again. Not even most of them. Maybe not any.

"It's time to let the least-likely-to-be-reread return to the world to find their own way to new readers, if they can.

"Of course, I worry about the consequences. What if, deprived of so much weight, my house becomes so light it floats up into the air? Then we'd have to tether it, and what a bother that would be, climbing a ladder to get inside.

"The graver worry, though, is that the moment I let a book go, I will immediately want to reread it, and thus will have to go buy another copy.

"Fortunately, though, for book addicts like me, there is an alternative. A virtually endless supply of reading material available for real cheap, referring to Samizdat.com. It seems to be Richard Seltzer's life's work to preserve, in a usable form, all the library you'll ever need of books and other works that are in the public domain.

"Whole collections are delivered to you on CDs or DVDs, to be inserted in your computer, providing you with a library that can be stored in a few inches of shelf space.

"All the words of all the books, in collections like: "The 19th Century on DVD,"� which includes not just literary works but also history, religion, philosophy, and even Victorian etiquette. The price? $85.

"Or a DVD that gathers the contents of 20 CD collections, covering various genres of fiction. Separately, the CDs would have cost you $390; bought all together, the cost is $69.

"The one I just bought is "Vintage Magazines", old ones. In fact, it's like having a whole history of the magazine, from Samuel Johnson's Rambler and Addison's and Steele's Spectator and Tatler in England to Scientific American from 1867 through 1898 and Atlantic Monthly from 1857 through 1867.

"No authors are being deprived of royalties, because they're all dead. Instead, they get a chance to speak from the grave, as new readers have a chance to find their work.

"And what I get is a library considerably larger than the one I'm beginning to break up and give away, only it takes far less space.

"Leaving me much more room for all the DVDs we're buying and will never have time to watch."