From the Editors' Skulls
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Q: “Spineless Books”? Dirk Stratton answers: Spineless Books is what the incredibly soft prehistoric sea cucumbers, which sometimes measured 80 meters in length, thought about as they slowly undulated their way through the thick life-laden volcanically heated oceans that raged beneath a harsh star that spit flares for weeks on end without once considering the possible damage to Earth's telecommunications systems, which didn't exist then, of course, but still, even the sea cucumbers would not be so rude if they had had the ability to spew solar energy, which they didn't, unless you count the various solids, liquids, and gasses all animals excrete on a daily basis, which could, depending on how generous you're feeling, be considered, indirectly, solar energy, if only because food, after all, is only sunlight converted into some other form, just as paper is sunlight that comes to us via trees, some of the most voracious sunlight consumers around, which means books are also descended from a star, a gathering of some really heavy compact light that reminds us—particularly when that collection of light has been put together by Spineless Books—that those sea cucumbers weren't so stupid after all, that they knew a good thing even before it existed, and while it appears that in the future some Spineless Books books will actually have spines, the legacy of those ancient forward thinking invertebrate beasts will live on, but with a little less slime. |
