Scene Unseen by Gabriel Valjan

 

Thirty(ish) years ago, Octavia Bulter’s Earthseed novels looked forward to an uncannily accurate (and pretty grim) version of present-day America. Let’s have some “fun” and write out own utopian/dystopian tales of the publishing business thirty years from now.

 

SCENE UNSEEN

 

He had witnessed all the cruelties that accompanied a long life, from the massive stupidity of politicians through the decades, which included senseless wars and two pandemics, the deaths of friends and family, and the decline of his own health. His mind was strong. His body, however, struggled to pay the rent because the cost of living increased with time. He understood that he was no longer young, no longer pretty, but he was one of them, a writer. As with all scribblers since time immemorial, he was not spared the meeting with his editor at the publisher’s house.

 

He had set out his clothes the night before. He would wear black because death could come at any hour now, and he wanted the clothes on his back to be his choice for the casket and crematorium. What he desired more than anything was what every writer wanted in life: to be read.

 

He awakened to an upside down world. He dressed slowly as old men do, with care and precision with his buttons, laces, and zipper. While the law of the land said all must wear sunglasses in public, his one act of rebellion was to dispense with the tie. Every man, woman, and child was obligated to wear shaded glasses in public because emotions were not allowed to be detected or displayed. What people were to think and feel was determined by the images taken in with the eyes from a multiplicity of sources, such as screens, walls, and that item he created: books.

 

Naked eyes were permitted at home. Answer the door in shades. Talk to the boss, coworker, or friend with spectacles on. Other than the family in the privacy of one’s home, only the physician was allowed to examine bared eyes during the annual physical exam.

 

He’d outlived his other editors, those persons of power who sat behind a desk and hid behind their own visor. They never ceased to have an opinion and offer suggestions. What mattered most was that The Work sold. A writer was as good as his or her last book. Today was no different. He sat in the chair and waited. This particular editor had survived the purges within the industry, a true veteran of the slush pile.

 

“Your average sentence is twenty words. Reduce it to ten, but vary the rhythm.”

“The rhythm?”

He’d learned long ago to parrot answers as questions because they skirted confrontation.

“Think jazz, fast and punchy, something that keeps the heart rate up, and pages turning.”

“Heart rate?” he asked, not certain he had not heard right. His hearing was not what it used to be.

“Between 120 to 240 beats per minute. Long enough to finish the book. You can do that.”

He thought to himself, if it doesn’t kill me first, and answered, “I can,” he said. While not a ‘yes’ for the recording for the lawyers, his answer showed compliance, agreeableness. “Anything else?” he asked his editor.

“Trim the story down to the new sweet spot. 75,000 words.”

“75 is the new sweet spot?”

“Folks in Production say it keeps print costs down and our margins intact. Think of it as a challenge, how to make the story work harder with less.”

“I’ll see what I can do to keep the heart alive,” he said to this new challenge.

“Easy solution is to do away with your subplot. The couple can go to the wayside.”

“Because they’re same-sex?” he asked, curious.

“Not because of that,” the editor answered. “They go because of their politics, and they’re the wrong demographic this year. Why offend, right?”

“No, we wouldn’t want to offend,” he said as genuine repetition and not as agreement. “Anything else?” he asked, eager to leave now.

“Yes, your cover art will be something neutral.”

“Blue?”

“No, the Persuasion Department was thinking along the lines of something gray.”

“Gray?”

“Safe, conventional. Readers crave what is predictable.” The editor smiled. “Oh, one more thing, your name.”

“As in high or low on the cover?”

“Neither,” was the answer. “We want to drop your first name and keep it simple.”

“Simple how?”

“Initial, and last name. It adds a little mystique, as to your gender.”

This perplexed him. “I’ve been writing for forty years, so I’d think there’s no mystery as to my gender.”

“I told them nobody would notice, but they said this was an experiment,” the editor said.

“An experiment?”

“Proof of concept on product placement. They claim that we’ve trained readers, between the color for covers, the choice of font on the page, and when we announce releases. I believe they said it’s like flakes on the water.”

“Flakes on the water?”

“Fish always come to the surface to be fed.”

“Fish don’t read.”

“But, a sale is a sale, and a royalty is a royalty. Once a book is sold, we never know if it is read or abandoned. Therein is the beauty of the sale: money is made when the bell is rung.”

He held onto those words for a moment because what he wanted above all things was to be read. “Don’t the folks in Persuasion have programs that can tell us the number of pages read on devices?”

“That would be an invasion of privacy. Anything else?”

 

He left the office, sunglasses on in compliance to Society and the world he’d leave one day. The shades hid the emotions in his eyes, but they’d see the words on the page that he would have to kill later that night, and tomorrow, and the day after.