The Disappointment of Parallel Worlds
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008Talk about disappointing! The May 1 issue of Library Journal came across my desk today, and the cover promised content that would be right up my alley: Parallel Worlds.
Look at that cover: all fantasy and cool and surreal. I was looking forward to a good, library-related article about the trends in alternate reality fiction, recommendations of good works to build a collection of such books, and etc. I was actually, truth be told, expecting it to be this story, mentioned on Neil Gaiman’s blog recently, about “books on fantastic cities and urban magic.”
So imagine my disappointment when, finally sitting down with the magazine this evening and opening to the cover story, I find an article on Web 2.0 instead. I initially reacted with disbelief: “Obviously,” I told myself, “this isn’t the cover article, but rather just an article along the same theme as the cover.” But flipping through found nothing else (not surprising, as Library Journal usually only has one main article, with the rest of the magazine filled with book reviews)
At this point, my only consolation is to imagine that, in some other reality somewhere, an alternate me is picking up a copy of this magazine and being rewarded with the article I was expecting to find in this reality. It’s cold comfort, but hey: at least I get my parallel world.