The Astral Mirror (3 page)

“You’ll never be able to go back to the same place again,” the physicist reminds him. “Too much time will have elapsed between one visit and the next.”

“I understand,” the writer answers. “But consider it: Starship crews would be forced to think ahead in terms of centuries. They’d never know what would be coming up next, what the next world would hold for them. What an age for adventure!”

The mathematician chuckles. “And if a star traveler should deposit a few dollars in a savings account, then come back several centuries later, what an age for compound interest!”

The science fiction writer turns his beaming face to the panel of experts and thanks each one of them in turn.

“You have certainly answered my problem. I can now write about interstellar ramjets, where the crews are frozen during the travel time from one star to the next. Why—the crew members will become virtually immortal! Who needs Mars? The rest of the universe is going to be much more exciting!”

Much has been said and written about the failures of American industry and the successes of the Japanese. Here is a tale that examines an industry I know rather well, publishing, and shows why we may soon be buying our books from Japan, as well as our automobiles and television sets. If any of my friends in the publishing industry take umbrage at this candid appraisal, good
!

It happened at approximately midnight, late in April, when they both should have been studying for their final exams.

Mark Moskowitz (a.k.a. “Mark the Monk”) and Mitsui Minimata shared a rented room over one of Berkeley’s shabbier head shops, less than a half-mile from the campus. Mark was going for his doctorate in logic; Mitsui was working doggedly toward his in electrical engineering. The few friends they had, years later, claimed that the idea was probably inspired by the various strange aromas wafting up from the shop below their room.

Mark’s sobriquet was two-edged: not only did he have the heavy-browed, hairy, shambling appearance of an early homonid; he was, despite his apeish looks, exceedingly shy, bookish, and unsocial to the point of reclusiveness. Mitsui was just the opposite: tiny, constantly smiling, excruciatingly polite, and an accomplished conversationalist. Where Mark sat and pondered, Mitsui flashed around the room like an excited electron.

He was struggling with a heavy tome on electrical engineering, just barely managing to stagger across the room with it, heading for his reading chair, when he tripped on the threadbare rug and went sprawling face-first. Mark, snapped out of his glassy-eyed introspection by the thud of his roommate’s impact on the floor, spent a moment focusing his far-sighted eyes on the situation. As Mitsui slowly sat up and shook his head groggily, Mark heaved himself up from the sagging sofa which served as his throne, shambled over to his friend, picked the little Japanese up with one hand, the ponderous textbook in the other, and settled them both safely on Mitsui’s reading chair.

“Thank you ten thousand times,” said Mitsui, after a sharp intake of breath to show that he was unworthy of his friend’s kindness.

“You ought to pick on books your own size,” Mark replied. For him, that amounted to a sizzling witticism.

Mitsui shrugged. “There
are
no books my size. Not in electrical engineering. They all weigh a metric ton.”

Mark glared down at the weighty tome. “I wonder why they still print books on paper. Wouldn’t electrons be a lot lighter?”

“Yes, of course. And cheaper, as well.”

“H’mm,” said Mark.

“H’mm,” said Mitsui.

And they never spoke of the idea again. Not to each other, at least. A month later they received their degrees and went their separate ways.

Gene Rockmore blinked several times at the beetle-browed young man sitting in his office. “Mark M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.,” the visitor’s card said. Nothing else. No phone number or address. Rockmore tried to engage the young man in trivial conversation while studying him. He looked like a refugee from a wrestling school, despite his three-piece suit and conservative tie. Or maybe because of them; the clothes did not seem to be his, they barely fit him, and he looked very uncomfortable in them.

For several minutes Rockmore chatted about the weather, the awful cross-town traffic, and the dangers of being mugged on Manhattan’s streets. He received nothing back from his visitor except a few grunts and uneasy wriggles.

Why me? Rockmore asked himself silently. Why do I have to get all the crazies who come in off the street? After all, I’m a vice president now. I ought to be involved in making deals with agents, and taking famous writers out to lunch. At least Charlene’s father ought to let me get into the advertising and promotion end of the business. I could be a smash on the Johnny Carson show, plugging our company’s books. Instead, I have to sit here and deal with inarticulate ape-men.

Rockmore, who looked like (and was) a former chorus boy in a Broadway musical, slicked back his thinning blond hair with one hand and finally asked, “Well, eh, just what is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Mos... I mean,
Dr.
Moskowitz?”

“Electronic books,” said Mark.

“Electronic books?” Rockmore asked.

“Uh-huh.” And for the next three hours, Mark did all the talking.

Mitsui hardly spoke at all, and when he did, it was in Japanese, a language both simple and supple. Most of the time, as he sat side-by-side with the vice president for innovation at Kanagawa Electronics and Shipbuilding, Inc., Mitsui tapped out numbers on his pocket computer. The v.p. grinned and nodded and hissed happily at the glowing digits on the tiny readout screen.

Robert Emmett Upton, president of Hubris Books, a division of WPA Entertainment, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Moribundic Industries, Inc., which in turn is owned by Empire State Bank (and, it is rumored, the Mafia), could scarcely believe his ears.

“Electronic books? What on earth are electronic books?”

Lipton smiled gently at his son-in-law. It didn’t do to get tough with Rockmore. He simply broke down and cried and went home to Charlene, who would then phone to tell her mother what a heel her father was to pick on such a sensitive boy as Gene.

So the president of Hubris Books rocked slowly in his big leather chair and tried to look interested as his son-in-law explained his latest hare-brained scheme. Lipton sighed inwardly, thinking about the time Rockmore suggested to the editorial board that they stop printing books that failed to sell well, and stuck only to best sellers. That was when Rockmore had just graduated from the summer course in management at Harvard. Ten years later, and he still didn’t know a thing about the publishing business. But he kept Charlene happy, and that kept Charlene’s mother happy, and
that
was the only reason Lipton allowed Rockmore to play at being an executive.

“So it’s possible,” Rockmore was saying, “to make the thing about the size of a paperback book. Its screen would be the size of a book page, and it could display a page of printed text or full-color illustrations...”

“Do you realize how much color separations cost?” Upton snapped. Instantly he regretted his harshness. He started to reach for the Kleenex box on the shelf behind his chair.

But Rockmore did not burst into tears, as he usually did. Instead he smirked. “No color separations, Papa. It’s all done electronically.”

“No color separations?” Lipton found that hard to believe. “No color separations. No printing at all. No paper. It’s like having a hand-sized TV set in your... er, hand. But the screen can be any page of any book we publish.”

“No printing?” Lipton heard his voice echoing, weakly. “No paper?”

“It’s all done by electronics. Computers.”

Lipton’s mind was in a whirl. He conjured up last month’s cost figures. The exact numbers were a blur in his memory, but they were huge—and most of them came from the need to transport vast tonnages of paper from the pulp mills to the printing plants, and then from the printing plants to the warehouses, and then from the warehouses to the wholesalers, and then...

He sat up straighter in his chair. “No paper? Are you certain?”

Mitsui bowed low to the president of Kanagawa. The doughty old man, his silver hair still thick, his dark eyes still alert, sat on the matted floor, dressed in a magnificent midnight-blue kimono. He barely nodded his head at the young engineer and the vice president for innovation, both of whom wore Western business suits.

With a curt gesture, he commanded them to sit. For long moments, nothing was said, as the servants brought the tea. The old man let his favorite, a young woman of heartbreakingly fragile beauty, set out the graceful little cups and pour the steaming tea.

Mitsui held his breath until the v.p. nodded to him. Then, from the inside pocket of his jacket, Mitsui pulled out a slim package, exquisitely wrapped in expensive golden gift paper and tied with a silk bow the same color as the president’s kimono. He held the gift in outstretched arms, presenting it to the old man.

The president allowed a crooked grin to cross his stern visage. As the v.p. knew, he took a childish pleasure in receiving gifts. Very carefully, the old man untied the bow and peeled away the heavy paper. He opened the box and took out an object the size of a paperback book. Most of its front surface was taken up by a video screen. There were three pressure pads at the screen’s bottom, nothing more.

The old man raised his shaggy brows questioningly. The v.p. indicated that he should press the first button, which was a bright green.

The president did, and the little screen instantly showed a listing of titles. Among them were the best selling novels of the month. By pressing the buttons as indicated, the old man got the screen to display the opening pages of half a dozen books within less than a minute.

He smiled broadly, turned to Mitsui and extended his right hand. He clasped the young engineer’s shoulder the way a proud father would grasp his bright young son.

Lipton sat at the head of the conference table and studied the vice presidents arrayed about him: Editorial, Marketing, Production, Advertising, Promotion, Subsidiary Rights, Legal, Accounting, Personnel, and son-in-law. For the first time in the ten years since Rockmore had married his daughter, Lipton gazed fondly at his son-in-law.

“Gentlemen,” said the president of Hubris Books, then, with his usual smarmy nod to the Editor-in-Chief and the head of Subsidiary Rights, “and ladies...”

They were shocked when he invited Rockmore to take the floor, and even more startled when the former chorus boy made a fifteen-minute presentation of the electronic book idea without falling over himself. It was the first time Lipton had
asked
his son-in-law to speak at the monthly executive board conference, and certainly the first time Rockmore had anything to say that was worth listening to.

Or was it? The assembled vice presidents eyed each other nervously as Rockmore sat down after his presentation. No one wanted to be the first to speak. No one knew which way the wind was blowing. Rockmore sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but maybe this was a trap. Maybe Lipton was finally trying to get his son-in-law bounced out of the company, or at least off the executive board.

They all fidgeted in their chairs, waiting for Lipton to give them some clue as to what they were supposed to think. The president merely sat up at the head of the table, fingers steepled, smiling like a chubby, inscrutable Buddha.

The silence stretched out to an embarrassing length. Finally, Editorial could stand it no longer.

“Another
invasion by technology,” she said, her fingers fussing absently with the bow of her blouse. “It was bad enough when we computerized the office. It took my people
weeks
to make the adjustment. Some of them are still at sea.”

“Then get rid of them,” Lipton snapped. “We can’t stand in the way of progress. Technology is the future. I’m sure of it.”

An almost audible sigh of relief went around the table. Now they knew where the boss stood; they knew what they were supposed to say.

“Well, of course technology is important,” Editorial backtracked, “but I just don’t see how an electronic thingamajig can replace a
book.
I mean, it’s cold... metallic. It’s a
machine.
A book is... well, it’s comforting, it’s warm and friendly, it’s the feel of paper...”

“Which costs too damned much,” Lipton said. Accounting took up the theme with the speed of an electronic calculator. “Do you have any idea of what paper costs this company each month?”

“Well, I...” Editorial saw that she was going to be the sacrificial lamb. She blushed and lapsed into silence.

“How much would an electronic book sell for?” Marketing asked.

Lipton shrugged. “One dollar? Two?”

Rockmore, from the far end of the table, spoke up. “According to the technical people I’ve spoken to, the price of a book could be less than one dollar.”

“Instead of fifteen to twenty,” Lipton said, “which is what our hardcovers are priced at now.”

“One dollar?” Marketing looked stunned. “We could sell
zillions
of books at a dollar apiece!”

“We could wipe out the paperback market,” Lipton agreed, happily.

“But that would cut off a major source of income for us,” cried Sub Rights.

“There would still be foreign sales,” said Lipton. “And film and TV rights.”

“I don’t know about TV,” Legal chimed in. “After all, by displaying a book on what is essentially a television screen, we may be construed as utilizing the broadcast TV rights...”

The discussion continued right through the morning. Lipton had sandwiches and coffee brought in, and the executive board stayed in conference well past quitting time.

In the port city of Numazu, not far from the blissful snow-covered cone of divine Fujiyama, Kanagawa Industries began the urgent task of converting one of its electronics plants to building the first production run of Mitsui Minimata’s electronic book. Mitsui was given the position of advisor to the chief production engineer, who ran the plant with rigid military discipline. His staff of six hundred (five hundred eighty-eight of them robots) worked happily and efficiently, converting the plant from building navigation computers to the new product.