AtD cover

[Dave Monroe]

   "Before I go, I've a gift for you, something I came
across in packing." He put an object on the table
between them--black, oblong, no larger than the end of
Paul's thumb.
   Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not
reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.
   "It's a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for
space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed
on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and
electrostatic charge system."
   He picked it up, demonstrated. "The book is held
closed by the charge, which forces against
spring-locked covers. You press the edge -- thus, and
the pages you've selected repel each other and the
book opens."
   "It's so small."
   "But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the
edge--thus, and so ... and the charge moves ahead one
page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual
pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too
delicate." He closed the book, handed it to Paul. "Try
it."

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=45

--- robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> Letizia Alverez de Toledo has observed that the vast
> Library is pointless; strictly speaking, all that is
> required is a single volume, of the common size,
> printed in nine or ten point type, that would
> consist of an infinite number of infinitely thin
> pages. (In the early seventeenth century, Cavlieri
> stated that every solid body is the superposition of
> an infinite number of planes.) Using that silken
> vademecum would not be easy: each apperent page
> would open into similar pages; the inconceivable
> middle page would have no "back."
> 
> Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"

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