From the time when you began the trilogy, did any technological change surpass what you were writing about?
Yeah, in “Oryx and Crake,” in the libraries, Jimmy’s job is to throw out paper books and put things on CD-ROM. [Now] it would be the Cloud. Though you never know; they still have a lot of stuff on microfiche. I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there’s always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.
Like books.
Exactly. And books are good for a couple of things: No. 1: They’re still readable when the Cloud goes down. No. 2: They make great kindling.
The word “Kindle” takes on new meaning –
Right! No. 3: Push comes to shove, they’re great insulating material. You could make a little igloo out of books if you really had to. I think of them as a form of carbon sequestration – all the CO2 is tied up in books. They don’t decay for a long time, if you bury them deep enough. It has to be below the ant level.
(via Margaret Atwood on books: “Push comes to shove, they’re great insulating material” – Salon.com)