Well, maybe not. I am speaking of one of the early lights of Science Fiction.
I am at present reading The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith. Now, that would not be too unusual, though I am sure that Doc Smith would be happy and possibly amazed that someone was reading his book 80 years after he wrote it, but there is something unusual about it. I am reading it on my PDA.
In the 21st Century that may not seem so odd, especially with several generations of eBooks behind us and Sony and Amazon try to rekindle (yes, that's a joke, son) interest in electronic books. But, consider for a moment that you are Doc Smith, writing one of the earliest Science Fiction novels in 1928. World War I is passed, but the Great Depression and World War II lie in the future. Men can fly, but only at a few hundred miles an hour. Television has not yet been created, and no one has ever been into space.
Now, imagine that you could go back 80 years, and show him someone reading his novel on a device smaller than most paperbacks. Not only do I think that he would be amazed, but I think that he would be very pleased to learn that his stories have survived into the electronic age, and that they had been translated into a new medium.
Now, being a pragmatic writer (and everything I know of him tells me that he was) he might not be pleased that I did not pay anything for the electronic copy of his work, but I think he would be amused to see me reading it on my glowing little screen.
