First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

“At a sleepover with Ingrid.”

“Oh, yeah. Again?”

“Thick as thieves, those two.”

“Yeah,” I said with a frown, “thick as thieves, those two.”

Bowden called during dinner. This was unusual for him, but not totally unexpected. Spike and I had crept away from Acme like naughty schoolkids, as we didn’t want to get into trouble over the cost of Major Pickles’s carpet, not to mention that it had taken us both all day and we’d done nothing else.

“It’s not great, is it?” said Bowden in the overserious tone he used when he was annoyed, upset or angry. To be honest, I had the most shares in Acme, but he was the managing director, so day-to-day operations were up to him.

“I don’t think it’s all that bad,” I said, going on the defensive.

“Are you insane?” replied Bowden. “It’s a disaster!”

“We’ve had bigger problems,” I said, beginning to get annoyed. “I think it’s best to keep a sense of proportion, don’t you?”

“Well, yes,” he replied, “but if we let this sort of thing take a hold, you never know where it might end up.”

I was pissed off now.

“Bowden,” I said, “just cool it. Spike got stuck to the ceiling by Raum, and if Pickles hadn’t given the demi-devil the cold steel, we’d both be pushing up daisies.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, until Bowden said in a quiet voice, “I’m talking about van de Poste’s Address to the Nation—what are you talking about?”

“Oh—nothing. What did he say?”

“Switch on the telly and you’ll see.”

I asked Tuesday to switch channels. OWL-TV was airing the popular current-affairs show Fresh Air with Tudor Webastow, and Tudor, who was perhaps not the best but certainly the tallest reporter on TV, was interviewing the Commonsense minister of culture, Cherie Yogert, MP.

“…and the first classic to be turned into a reality book show?”

“Pride and Prejudice,” announced Yogert proudly. “It will be renamed The Bennets and will be serialized live in your household copy the day after tomorrow. Set in starchy early-nineteenth-century England, the series will feature Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters being given tasks and then voted out of the house one by one, with the winner going on to feature in Northanger Abbey, which itself will be the subject of more ‘readeractive’ changes.”

“So what van de Poste is sanctioning,” remarked Webastow slowly, “is the wholesale plunder of everything the literary world holds dear.”

“Not everything,” corrected Ms. Yogert. “Only books penned by English authors. We don’t have the right to do dumb things with other nations’ books—they can do that for themselves. But,” she went on, “I think ‘plunder’ would be too strong a word. We would prefer to obfuscate the issue by using nonsensical jargon such as ‘market-led changes’ or ‘user-choice enhancements.’ For centuries now, the classics have been dreary, overlong and incomprehensible to anyone without a university education. Reality book shows are the way forward, and the Interactive Book Council are the people to do it for us!”

“Am I hearing this right?”

“Unfortunately,” murmured Landen, who was standing next to me.

“We have been suffering under the yoke of the Stalinist principle of one-author books,” continued Ms. Yogert, “and in the modern world we must strive to bring democracy to the writing process.”

“I don’t think any authors would regard their writing process as creative totalitarianism,” said Webastow uneasily. “But we’ll move on. As I understand it, the technology that will enable you to alter the story line of a book will change it permanently, and in every known copy. Do you not think it would be prudent to leave the originals as they are and write alternative versions?”

Yogert smiled at him patronizingly. “If we did that,” she replied, “it would barely be stupid at all, and the Commonsense Party takes the stupidity surplus problem extremely seriously. Prime Minister van de Poste has pledged to not only reduce the current surplus to zero within a year but to also cut all idiocy emissions by seventy percent in 2020. This requires unpopular decisions, and he had to compare the interests of a few die-hard, elitist, dweeby, bespectacled book fans with those of the general voting public. Better still, because this idea is so idiotic that the loss of a single classic—say, Jane Eyre—will offset the entire nation’s stupidity for an entire year. Since we have the potential to overwrite all the English classics to reader choice, we can do really stupid things with impunity. Who knows? We may even run a stupidity deficit—and can then afford to take on other nations’ idiocy at huge national profit. We see the UK as leading the stupidity-offset-trading industry—and the idiocy of that idea will simply be offset against the annihilation of Vanity Fair. Simple, isn’t it?”

I realized I was still holding the phone. “Bowden, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“This stinks to high heaven. Can you find out something about this so-called Interactive Book Council? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Call me back.”

I returned my attention to the TV.

“And when we’ve lost all the classics and the stupidity surplus has once again ballooned?” asked Webastow. “What happens then?”