Michael Swanwick's one-of-a-kind stories-in-bottles
Mario sez, "Michael Swanwick does this way cool thing where he writes a short short story, then puts it in a bottle and seals it, then destroys all other drafts and incarnations of the story, thus creating a unique object that you would have to destroy if you wanted to read the story."
Link (Thanks, Mario!)After the story is placed in the bottle, I sign and date the glass with a diamond-tipped pen. Then I cork the bottle and Marianne covers the top with sealing wax. After writing a letter of provenance, I destroy every copy, physical or electronic, other than the one inside the bottle. It is now, in the original, unspoiled sense of the word, unique.
Finally, I give it away. Usually to a charity auction or such, but sometimes to a friend. The owner of the bottle, whoever he or she is, can either read the story or else possess the object -- but cannot do both.
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William Gibson's poem "Agrippa" was originally printed as a limited-edition book that self-destructed as it was read.
I forget the details, but as I recall there was a printed version that smudged up and became unreadable, and a floppy disk version that scrolled the text past once and then scrambled itself. Of course, that version was swiftly hacked and the poem is now floating about the web.
Swanwick's bottle stories, despite being lower tech, seem much less hackable.
surely he has thrown some into the sea?
Easily hackable. Cut bottom of bottle, scan story, re-glue. I wonder if the stories involve locked room mysteries?
"It is now, in the original, unspoiled sense of the word, unique."
How about this for unique: write something that is timeless, profound, and worth reading. Give it to people to read. That would certainly be more valuable to our disposable society than a bunch of words in a sealed glass jar.
Oh, but thats difficult. It's much easier to feign originality with packaging, theatrics, and unnecessary scarcity.
Bingo, Michael Swanwick is a bestselling and prolific novelist who produces many works in just the way you describe. Ascribing "feigned originality" to him on the basis that he never writes "timeless and profound" work is Just Wrong (and disappointingly reactionary).
Does ink show up on an MRI?
This is not a new idea at all. Edgar Allan Poe's first published story (for which he won a contest) was titled something like "Note Found in a Bottle" and was submitted in exactly the same form. It was arguably chosen for its packaging rather than its content.
He's a lightweight. I keep my stories unique by never writing them in the first place. On the other hand, he has a great excuse for emptying a whiskey bottle.
Dunno about MRI (which looks for different densities of various molecules which have magnetic moments), but I sure bet a combination of IR scanning and multispectral analysis would reveal the inner pages pretty well.
backscatter x-ray maybe?
Given the reaction to this and other stories of late, perhaps as a corollary to BoingBoing's title as "A Directory of Wonderful Things" the comments ought to have the subtitle "...And the Pedants Who Lurk, Slavering to Crush Those Things Into the Dirt of Mundacity." Go outside and smash butterflies while you're at it.
#11 Hear, hear.
+1 for thinking different
-2 for artificial scarcity
#11 - Very well said.
Michael Swanwick's project is indeed an uplifting Wonderful Thing. I rather regret taking the time to read the mean-spirited comments.
#13 - Ordinarily I'd agree about the artifical scarcity - I don't like 'limited editions' - but this is a special case, where it's primarily about the physical object and the concept; the scarcity is the whole point.