It's only been a year since a Margaret Atwood released her book "MaddAddam," and she's already busy preparing her next work. But if you want to read this, which I'm sure you do, you better start taking very, very good care of yourself.
The unread, unpublished manuscript Atwood is currently working on will not be unveiled for another 100 years as part of the Future Library project. Created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, the Future Library is a public art project that will result in a huge anthology of written work published in 2114.
As part of the project, 1,000 trees have been planted in a forest just outside of Oslo, Norway. The paper from these trees will be used to print the anthology in 100 years. Every year, the Future Library will commission a new written work from an author for the collection. Atwood, legendary author of such books as "The Handmaid's Tale" and the Booker Prize-winning "The Blind Assassin," was recently announced as the first author to be a part of the project.
"I think it goes right back to that phase of our childhood when we used to bury little things in the backyard, hoping that someone would dig them up, long in the future, and say, 'How interesting, this rusty old piece of tin, this little sack of marbles is. I wonder who put it there,'" Atwood told The Guardian.
In this age of digitization we live in now where print books are increasingly becoming ancient history, it's interesting that a project such as this intended to be enjoyed in the future would choose such a seemingly antiquated way of preservation. Will people know what paper is in 100 years? Will the technology to print on paper even exist?
The Future Library's trust, made up of library experts, has thought of that. The authors' works will be kept in a special room at the Deichmanske public library opening in 2018, which will also include a printing press to ensure the project is able to follow through with its objective and print the works on paper in the future.
It'll be interesting to see what works from this collection resonate with people 100 years from now and why. On one hand, literature can reveal so much about the time it was written, from the style to the language to the subject matter. But as we all know, a great story always withstands the test of time.
