My friend Petrona has gathered a bunch of reviews of the new Kindle e-reader from Amazon, so you don’t have to.

I haven’t actually seen or held one (consult Neil Gaiman’s blog for a more upfront experience), but I can see its appeal – especially for folks like my bro-in-law, whose job it is to travel the world fixing other peoples’ computers. For people like him, a Kindle packed with a few blogs, newspaper subs, some SF blockbusters and computer manuals (which would otherwise weigh a ton) could prove extremely handy.

I can’t see myself buying one, though. For a start, I don’t think it would be tuff enuff to face up to the pressure-cooker environment that is literary life chez Gee. I prefer my user interface to withstand the kind of extended punishment that e-readers probably wouldn’t like. I do not tend to treat books as heirlooms, but as working documents. My books must withstand being scribbled on with a variety of media (ink, crayon, paint, cold porridge, human blood). They must endure long periods in a hot, humid atmosphere (I like to read in the bath) and recover from the occasional trauma of total immersion, either in the bath (Tolkien Studies, vol 1) or sometimes down the loo (one or other of Gerald Durrell’s zoological memoirs) without fritzing out or blowing up.

You’d think, that as an avid Tolkien fan I’d have a fine hardback three-volume edition of The Lord Of The Rings vacuum-packed in cellophane or stored in a vault in an argon atmosphere behind a 24-hour armed response unit. Not a bit of it. My copy of the timeless classic is a cheapo movie tie-in untimely ripped, much graffitoed with notes and marginalia, and stuffed with small pieces of paper (including a treasured admit-one pass for the party in LA hosted by TheOneRing.net to celebrate the Oscar-night sweep of The Return Of The King.) The book – now more like a mille-feuille pastry well past its sell-by date – is scuffed and multiply repaired with tape. When the time comes to recall my legacy, they shall call me ‘Spinebreaker’.

Hmmm. The previous sentence requires some more portentous capitalization and dramatic emphasis. They Shall Call Me … Spinebreaker. Actually, I quite like that. Henry Gee, Spinebreaker. When word got round that I was not only a Nature editor but the new editor of the Tolkien Society journal Mallorn, a colleague suggested that I should simply write, by way of manuscript rejection letters, something like this.

Dear Professor Trellis

Thank you for your manuscript entitled “On the positively negative interaction between one abbreviation and another abbreviation, conditional on the negatively double-negative interaction between a third abbreviation and one or other of the first two abbreviations”.

Please be aware that I am a Servant of the Secret Fire, Wielder of the Flame of Anor, and in that capacity I’m afraid to say that the Dark Fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun. I regret that your manuscript must go back to the Shadow. I am sorry to be the bearer of what must be disappointing news.

Sincerely

Dr Henry Gee
Spinebreaker.

PS - You Shall Not Pass!

Oh, I wish. But back to the Kindle. Now, the demise of books and their replacement by e-readers has been heralded more often and with more vigour than the retirements of James D. Watson.

There are many reasons why books have remained obdurately on our shelves nonetheless. The first is that a neat, horizontal shelf lined with books is a fine sight to see. I find it wonderfully comforting. There are few things that lift my heart more.

The second is that books allow one to engage directly with the text, without the necessary intercession of some item of technology without which the text cannot be accessed at all.

This was brought home to me by this article by Stuart Jeffries, reporting on the vast book depository being built near Leeds to house the books and magazines that nobody ever reads, but which the British Library is legally obliged to house. For every Gutenberg Bible and Magna Carta, you see, are dozens of items such as Snooze – The Life, Letters and Opinions of Steve McLaren; Feathers are Erotic, Chickens are Exotic; Slug-Fancier’s Gazette; The World Is Full of Ribulose Bisphosphate Carboxylase; Dinosaur Cladistics Monthly; Deirdre Does Didcot; and The God Delusion. Why spend £20m on a vast temperature-controlled warehouse when you could digitize everything and shred the originals?

The reason is a simple matter of Ars Longa, Electronica Brevis – there is not sufficient confidence in the archiving biz to let everything fly off into ones and zeroes. “Think about it,” says Jeffries,

“CD-ROMs used to be the future. Now they join VCRs, Walkmans and 8-track machines in the technological dustbin. Indeed, The CD-ROM became outmoded so quickly that it is difficult to transfer material from them to more modern digital formats. Who knows which current digital formats will go the way of CD-ROMs in the future?”

SF is full of robotic or digital organisms that evolve so fast that we humans are left eating pretechnolithic dust within a matter of weeks, if not hours. But it’s no help to archivists if digital languages evolve from nothing and vanish into extinction within a space of years, when we can read Magna Carta on dear old paper. And even The God Delusion, if we must, and provided it’s coyly wrapped inside a cover of Deirdre Does Didcot.