
Our scientific investigations occasionally take us to garage sales in search
of raw materials. This shouldn't be much of a surprise to our loyal readership.
We are, after all, the cheapskates who figured out the way to
buy the cheapest condoms
and who rely on one night of door-to-door begging to provide our
yearly supply of food.
On one recent trip we came across a book bursting with such retro-geek
insouciance that we couldn't resist its allure. Maintaining a poker face not to
divulge our keen interest, we negotiated the price down to $.25 and made off
with our loot to our labs for further investigation. There, we had the chance to
sit down and read the back cover:
The back cover only deepened our thrill of discovery, but it raised more questions than answers. First, we wanted to know what influence this book had over the last 27 years. The book has only a truncated Wiki entry. It was first published in hard cover in1985:
It was even published in French:
A Sinhala Language edition also appeared, but we couldn't dig
up that cover online. (Sri Lankan readers, please let us know if you do!)
The book also spawned a series of follow-ons, including
The Valentine That Ate My Teacher, The Christmas Tree That Ate My
Mother, and The Jack-O'-Lantern That Ate My Brother. The others
don't appear to have been translated, but with imaginative titles like those, we thought it
safe to attribute that
to French provincialism rather than any lack of literary merit.
The Letdown
Amazon was kind enough to provide a snippet of a review
from Kathleen Brachmann, Highland Park Public
Library, Ill.,
though, which dampened our expectations a bit:
Harry's whiny, self-pitying narrative soon becomes annoying. Other characters
are thinly drawn. The plot moves quickly enough, and there are some wonderful
flashes of humor, but as a whole the book is marred by Roger's totally
unrealistic transformation and by the hokey and unrealistic "release of power"
between Harry and the computer.
Was this going to be another disappointing life lesson to
never judge a book by its cover? Was the evocative imagery that caught our
attention so completely at the garage sale just another cheap come-on that would
ultimately result in nothing more than a letdown? Will we be filled with that
empty feeling of loss and remorse to which we've grown so accustomed over the
years?
Unfortunately, yes. To sum up the book, Harry is neurotic and
creepy, the book makes no sense whatsoever, and (spolier alert!!!) the ending is
nothing but corny and whitewashed.
Here is some of Harry's internal dialogue (p. 14):
When my Dad is on his deathbed, he will turn to me and say,
"Harry, I'm sorry I didn't get you a voice synthesizer."
I will say, "But I didn't want a voice synthesizer."
Dad will say, "I know you really did and that's why it's so
nice of you to say you didn't want one. I've been an awful father."
Later, at the behest of the computer, he goes to visit its
original owner. As this little old lady goes to fetch him some cherry pie and
peppermint tea, Harry wonders (p. 54):
Suddenly I got really nervous. What if she had gone to get a
gun and was planning to blow my head off? Could I wrestle a knife away from her?
Our memories of the 80s are bittersweet, to be sure, but they
don't include a lot of old ladies randomly murdering 12 year-olds...
If you are curious about the source of this disturbingly
morbid inner life, apparently it came from his mother (p. 86):
"I just wonder," she said, "whether we are doing the right
thing. Well," she sighed, "we're either doing the right thing or the wrong
thing. We either live or die."
Further Investigations - Price Comparison
Once it became clear that we weren't, on any level, going to
enjoy reading this book, terror struck in. How were we going to turn this $.25
investment into something worthwhile?
The first thing that struck us was the price printed on the
book: $2.50. This edition was published in 1987. Using the inflation calculator
at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we see how that translate to $5.01 in today's
money:
So, pretty much, mass-market paperback books for kids cost now
about what they cost then. For comparison, a typical paperback Magic Tree
House book lists for $4.99.
Reading the Book Online
We wondered whether it would be possible to read this book
online. It was clear from a cursory reading that this book would never be
republished anywhere, ever. But in 100 or 200 years, when these cheap paperbacks
have disintegrated to dust, will the grad students writing their dissertations
on WarGames as an example of pre-post-post-post modern angst be able to read this piece of period literature
for themselves?
The first place we checked was Google Books. The good news is
that they
have the book completely scanned. The bad news
is that you can only read a few chapters online. Of course, this book is still
under copyright, and based on current law, will probably be so more than 70
years from now, since the author is still alive. But there's no way to buy or access Google's digital scan. It's
searchable, but if you want a copy of the book, you have to buy a used one.
However, we were able to download a complete digital version
of the book from
OpenLibrary.org. They had several options; a
error-rich text-only version based on an un-edited OCR scan as well as a fully
DRMed PDF file via Adobe Digital Editions. Not an ideal situation, but still we
were able to download, free of charge, a full copy of the book. It was only for
a two week loan, though, and if the book developed any type of interest, the two
copies would never satisfy demand. That is, of course, with digital loans of
library books. A physical-book paradigm prevails which limits access
unnecessarily.
Conclusion
We're glad to see that our literary and cultural
heritage is secure in the virtual (and physical) vaults of Archive.org and
Google.com, though it's obvious that publishers need to work harder to make
these long-out-of-print titles available for people who want to read them.
Whether it's through charging a nominal fee or simply making such books
available for free, we need to move forward to rationalize a currently
irrational system. It would be to *everyone's* benefit; publishers and readers
alike. Even used bookstores would probably benefit as more interest is generated
for long-forgotten titles.
Other experiments:
What is the Ultimate Jello-Shot?
How to Light a Jell-O Shot on Fire
Can You Nail Jell-O to a Wall?
How To Keep a Jack-o-Lantern Fresh?
Does Viagra Keep Flowers from Wilting?
How To Keep Beer Cold
The Cheney Shotgun Experiment