The Future Library Project

This starts with a ramble. For the first time in ages I sat down and read a book in a day; this half term break has been productive. The book in question was Slade House by David Mitchell (of author fame, rather than of Mitchell and Webb fame) who you may recognise as the author of Cloud Atlas, but so far The Bone Clocks is my recommendation. They are all brilliant. After finishing the book and looking in my library to see if I had any more unread books by him (I had: my mother had thrown Ghostwritten my way at some point) I turned to google to find the order of publishing. Looking down his list of works I spotted "From Me Flows What You Call Time" 2016 (for publishing in 2114).

Looking into it a bit the whole thing is called The Future Library Project where each year from 2014 until 2114 an author will submit a story on the theme of imagination and time into a sealed room in Norway. 1000 Norwegian Pines have been planted and it is with that wood that these hundred books will be published. Also encased in this sealed library is a printing press so that whoever is in charge at the time will still have access to our (hopefully) primitive medium of paper. So far three authors have submitted work, Margaret Atwood,  David Mitchell and Sjon.

It seems that it is the summer each year that they submit and so a quick bit of maths tells me that I will be 123 years plus about a month when they are released. The oldest ever person was 122 years plus 164 days old and my gender is rather counting against me since the oldest 10 people ever were female.

I'm a big fan of these sort of projects. I've mentioned the world seed bank before, as well as The Long Now Foundation. To me these projects that carry on long after their creators are inspirational.

Here's a link to their website. It's beautiful.