Connie Willis’ I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is either a long short story or a short novellette. As such, it is very much focused on an idea, rather than on plot or character development. The idea at the heart of this tale is the struggle to preserve books that might otherwise be lost to time, fire, flood, war, negligence, etc. This story argues that every book, no matter how silly, obsolete, and useless it might be, should never be completely lost.
At the beginning of I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, Jim is very much of the opinion that physical books don’t need saving. Sure, book stores are closing left and right, but there’s the Cloud. Books can be digitized and downloaded any time. There’s no need to worry. In fact, he opines at the beginning of the story, some book stores deserve to close because they’re not keeping up with the times. Who wants to dig through dusty old books in a smelly shop when they could just click the buy button on their device?
But then Jim wanders into what appears to be the stereotypical bookshop of his argument. Ozymandius’ (named after the Shelley poem, of course) is crammed with just the sorts of books that Jim believes no one would ever want, all buried under an inch of dirt and dust and completely unorganized. He enjoys seeing his theories confirmed until he follows a pretty blonde through the staff only door and discovers the most unique collection I’ve ever seen in fiction.
The staff area of Ozymandius’ is a labyrinth of books Jim has never heard of before. He scoffs but, when the pretty blonde, Cassandra, offers to give him a tour, he learns that these books are the last of their kind. Once, there were multiple copies of these books in stores and libraries all over the place. But time and tastes have done their work. Copies were lost or destroyed until only one remained. The staff of Ozymandius’ somehow manage to save that last copy from disaster or the landfill. Jim is desperate to know how, but that is one of the many unanswered questions that torment him after he leaves and is unable to find his way back.
As I read I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, I had a reaction that I’ve never had to a book before: I felt attacked. I’m a librarian and I have, to use the euphemism that Cassandra scorns, “de-accessioned” hundreds of books in my time. We have only so much shelf space at our library. There’s no place for books that don’t get used. That said, I truly appreciated the argument that the last copy must be preserved. I don’t want any knowledge to ever be lost and I wish that libraries and bookstores didn’t have to fight so hard to stay open. Right now, I don’t see how that’s possible unless something like Ozymandius’ magically appears to rescue us.
I recommend I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land to bibliophiles of all stripes. It doesn’t matter if you read print or electronic books. The important thing is that we all read and, thus, do our little bit to keep books and reading alive. Maybe one of us will be the one to save a last copy and keep it from being lost forever.
I received a free copy of this novellette from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It has already been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction but it will be widely released 30 April 2018.