Passions Read & Hearts Fed

Abstract

A review of Connie Willis' recently-published story, “I Met a Traveler in an Antique Land,” (Asimov’s, December 2017). The setting for Willis’ cautionary tale is a chimeric Manhattan bookstore, Ozymandia’s. The labyrinthine business is a last refuge for endangered books. The protagonist, an ambitious, forward-thinking blogger, rethinks his penchant for all things innovative when he visits the store and becomes conscious of the havoc wreaked upon books by the circumstances of the Anthropocene (wars, weather, bookworms, bookburning, thoughtless culling, etc.). He comes to understand the urgent need for, and complexity of the systematic preservation of information.