Growing a library of the future
This week Margaret Atwood stood in a forest in Norway and revealed something about her new story: It’s called “Scribbler Moon.” But that’s all she’s saying: The story won’t be read for 100 years.
It’s part of the Future Library, a conceptual project by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. One thousand trees were planted in the forest, and when fully grown, they’ll be cut down and made into the paper that Atwood’s story will be printed on in 2114. Until then, no one can read it.
“There’s something magic about it,” Atwood told the Guardian. “It’s like Sleeping Beauty. The texts are going to slumber for100 years and then they’ll wake up, cometo life again. It’s a fairytale length of time. She slept for100 years.”
During the next century, one selected writer will contribute a story each year to the Future Library. David Mitchell has been announced as the 2015 author.
There will be limited editions of the complete run of100 stories printed on the future paper fromthe future trees, which are saplings not yet knee-high. Certificates available for about $900 each guarantee the eventual holder— presumably, if you can buy a certificate now, you won’t be around to collect— the 2114 edition. One hundred of the1,000 certificates have been sold; 3,000 editions in all are planned.
Atwood, whose futuristic fictions include “The Hand maid’s Tale,” “Oryx and Crake” and “Madd Addam,” knows that the entire premise of trees growing to be harvested for paper for print books many decades hence is a bit precarious.
“I am sending a manuscript into time,” she wrote in a prepared statement. “Will any human beings be waiting there to receive it? Will there be a ‘Norway’? Will there be a ‘forest’? Will there be a ‘library’? How strange it is to think ofmy own voice— silent by then for a long time— suddenly being awakened, after100 years. What is the first thing that voice will say as a notyet-embodied hand draws it out of its container and opens it to the first page?
“I picture this encounter — between my text and the so-far nonexistent reader— as being a little like the red-painted handprint I once saw on thewall of a Mexican cave that had been sealed for over three centuries. Who now can decipher its exact meaning? But its general meaning was universal: any human being could read it. It said: ‘Greetings. Iwas here.’”