The Last Book in the Universe (16 page)

After years of writing mysteries and suspense thrillers for adults, Rodman Philbrick decided to try his hand at a novel for young readers. That novel,
Freak the Mighty
, was published in 1993 to great acclaim. In addition to being named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and winning several state awards, it was also made into the Miramax feature film
The Mighty
in 1998. Rod returns to
Freak the Mighty
protagonist Maxwell Kane's story in a sequel,
Max the Mighty
, a fast-paced cross-country odyssey.

Rod takes young readers to the American West in his exhilarating tale of two brothers on the run,
The Fire Pony
, winner of the Capital Choice Award, and on to a land where nothing is as it seems in the science-fiction adventure
REM World
. After completing
The Last Book in the Universe
, also an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Rod thought back to his New England roots and knowledge of boat-building to write
The Young Man and the Sea
, the story of a boy who tries to save his family by catching a giant bluefin tuna.
School Library Journal
praised the novel's “wide-open adventure” and “heartpounding suspense” and named it a Best Book of the Year in 2004.

Rodman Philbrick has also written several spine-tingling series for young readers with his wife, Lynn Harnett, including The House on Cherry Street and The Werewolf Chronicles. Rod and Lynn divide their time between homes on the coast of Maine and in the Florida Keys.

Q:
What inspired you to write
The Last Book in the Universe?

A:
The editor Michael Cart asked me to contribute a story to an anthology called
Tomorrowland
. At first all I came up with was an intriguing title, “The Last Book in the Universe.” Then I had to think up a world where there might be a “last book,” and think about why people had stopped reading. After finishing the short story, which was eventually published, I couldn't stop thinking about Spaz's world and set about making it a full-scale novel. No doubt many of the “sci-fi” elements came from my love of movies like the original
The Time Machine
, and from my adolescent fascination with comic book adventures.

 

Q:
We've included the original short story in this book. What did you do to expand it into a novel?

A:
The short story is pretty much confined to Spaz and Ryter. To make it an interesting novel I needed more characters and more adventure. So I invented Eden and populated it with people who had “improved” themselves genetically. Then I added Spaz's sister Bean, put her in peril, and the adventure began.

 

Q:
Spaz is different from most of the people we meet in the Urb. In part, it's because he doesn't use mindprobes because of his epilepsy, but there's something else that sets him apart as well. What do you think that is?

A:
Spaz is an outsider, so he's more able to think for himself and see the world with clear eyes. He's open to people, as he hopes they'll be open to him.

 

Q:
Is Ryter based on a real person?

A:
Ryter is an older and much braver version of myself — an improved me that looks like Sean Connery!

 

Q:
Life is obviously very different for humans after the Big Shake, but do you see any parallels between Spaz's world and our own?

A:
Oh, yes. There are versions of the latches in many urban areas today. Various addictive drugs do as much damage to the brain as the mindprobes. And of course we've embarked on the dangerous and exciting adventure of investigating the process of genetic engineering. No one knows how far it will go, or if the human race will eventually take control of its own evolution.

 

Q:
Our society is fixated on makeovers and plastic surgery. Aren't we already on our way to creating proovs?

A:
Yes. Take a walk through Beverly Hills and you'll see them everywhere.

 

Q:
Speaking of proovs, the characters in this book use a lot of words that aren't part of our vocabulary. How did you come up with them?

A:
As a teenager I was fascinated by the Anthony Burgess novel
A Clockwork Orange
. He made up words that are a combination of Russian and English. It added to the whole flavor and feeling of the story. I tried to do a similar thing by inventing words that might be useful in my own future world.

 

Q:
Ryter makes a few references to
The Odyssey
while he and Spaz are traveling across the latches. How is their journey similar?

A:
The warrior Odysseus is trying to get home to his wife and family. He repeatedly risks his life to try and find his way home. Spaz's family is one person — his stepsister Bean — and he'll do anything to help her. Spaz isn't as courageous as Odysseus, and he certainly isn't a great warrior, but Ryter recognizes the similarities and comments upon it.

 

Q:
You've written books that are based in a familiar setting, like
Freak the Mighty,
and others that take place in lands you've invented, like this book. Which is easier to write about?

A:
Imagined worlds are always a bit more difficult for me. I can't write about a place until it seems real in my own head, so that obviously takes a leap of imagination that's not required for the real world.

 

Q:
Your most recent novel,
The Young Man and the Sea,
also involves an epic journey of sorts. What can you tell us about it?

A:
It's the story of Skiff Beaman, a kid who sets out in a very small boat at night, alone, and journeys thirty miles out to sea to try and harpoon a giant bluefin tuna.

 

Q:
Can you imagine a world without fishing? What would you do in your free time?

A:
Is there anything but fishing and being out on the water? Well, yes, actually. I have to keep the boat in good repair so it doesn't sink! Luckily I'm good with my hands.

Rodman Philbrick created a whole new way of talking for Spaz and the people of the Urb. Here is a selected glossary:

 

3D:
a holographic movie that's considered old technology compared to a mindprobe

backtimes:
the time before the Big Shake, the cataclysmic earthquakes that destroyed civilization

bork off, to:
to irritate

bristlebar:
a protective device

cancellation:
death

carboshake:
a beverage that provides energy

chetty blade:
a machete knife

choxbar:
a prepackaged food item that tastes like chocolate

contributors:
what proovs call their birth parents

crib:
a room or a home

cut someone's red, to:
to kill someone

cutwire:
a protective device similar to barbed wire

cyber-intelligence:
a sophisticated computer

deef:
a person with a genetic defect

Eden:
a secure area within the Urb where proovs live

Forbidden Zone, the:
an area planted with land mines that separates Eden from the Urb

googan:
an idiot

gummy:
an old person

hide-or-cancel:
a children's game

holoquarium:
a holographic image of fish swimming in water

holoscape:
a 3D illusion of a landcape

latch:
a subdivision of the Urb controlled by a gang

latch-boss:
a gang leader who controls territory in the Urb

looping:
participating in a probe that repeats endlessly

luvmate:
a lover

med-tek:
a medical technician; like a doctor in the backtimes

microflash:
a flashlight

mindprobe:
a virtual reality experienced by your mind via an electrode needle

mope:
dumb, lame (used as an adjective or a noun)

needlebrain:
a person addicted to mindprobes

normal:
a person who has not been genetically improved

Pipe, the:
a tunnel system that used to transport water

proov:
a genetically improved human

runner:
a person who carries messages illegally between the latches

shooter:
a violent mindprobe

splash, to:
to kill

splat gun:
a deadly weapon

stackbox:
a concrete room used for storage in the backtimes, now used by squatters as homes

stunstik:
a weapon that delivers an electric shock

takvee:
a Tactical Urban Vehicle; an armored cyber-driven van

tek:
a Technical Security Guard

trendie:
a mindprobe about life in Eden

Urb, the:
the area inhabited by normals

voicewriter:
a machine that converts the spoken word into text

wheel:
to drag a person in the street, tied to a jetbike

zoomed:
crazy

Here are a few more books that look to the future and ask, “What if?”:

 

Feed
by M.T. Anderson

What if we had computer chips implanted in our brains — a constant feed of information, games, and advertising? Titus doesn't think about anything but what the feed tells him, until he meets Violet, a girl unlike anyone he's ever met.

 

Farenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

In Spaz's world, people don't read books. In Guy Montag's world, they burn them. A classic novel about censorship and freedom.

 

The House of the Scorpion
by Nancy Farmer

Matt is a clone — a genetic double of the most powerful man in Opium, El Patron. When El Patron dies, Matt begins a journey that will lead him to question everything he knows.

 

The Giver
by Lois Lowry

Jonas lives in a structured community where there is no pain. But when he is chosen to become the community's Receiver of Memory, he must take on all the pain and suffering of the past.

 

1984
by George Orwell

Written in 1949, when 1984
was
the future, this novel explores life in a society where the Thought Police can read your mind and where Big Brother is watching your every move.

The Last Book in the Universe
began as a short story for an anthology called
Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future
. When Rodman Philbrick finished the story, he didn't want to stop writing because he knew Spaz had a lot more to say. Here are excerpts from the original short story.

If you're reading this, it must be a thousand years from now. Because nobody around here reads anymore. Why bother, when you can just probe it? Put all the images and excitement right inside your brain and let it rip. Trendies, shooters, sexbos — name it and you can probe it. Shooters are hot right now, but last year all anybody wanted to probe was a trendy.

Sexbos, they're
always
popular, even if nobody wants to admit it. Why that is, I can't say exactly, because I've never probed a sexbo or any of the other mindflicks. Not because I wouldn't like to, but because I've got this serious medical condition that means I'm allergic to electrode needle probes. Stick one of those in my brain and it'll kick off a really bad seizure and then — total meltdown, lights out, that's all, folks.

Which really borks me. Because I'd love to probe a sexbo, if you want to know the truth. Just so I'd know what everybody else is talking about.

They call me Spaz, which is kind of a mope name, but I don't mind, not anymore. I'm talking into an old voicewriter program that prints out my words, because I was there when the Bully Bangers went to wheel the Ryter, and I saw what they saw, and I heard what they heard, and it kind of turned my brain around.

See, the Ryter was this old geez living in a little stackbox on the edge of the projos. A place where losers get stored, because they can't get anything better. Nobody owns the stackboxes, and if you squat in one long enough, I guess you can call it home — if home is a ten-by-ten concrete box stacked ten high, in rows of a hundred. Used to use 'em for prisons, before they came up with the mind fix for criminals.

There's no hydro in the stacks, no plumbing, no broadband, no nothing. Just the empty box and a door that looks like the lid on a sideways dumpster.

Anyhow, back to the old geez. The first thing that was different about him was he left his door open. See, I'm all jacked to kick the mutha down, but when I turn the corner the door is open, and my foot connects with nothing, just empty air. Which makes me feel like a real googan, and I guess he saw the look of it on my face.

“Could have happened to anybody,” the geez says. He's kneeling on the floor by some old crate he'd fixed up as a desk, and he doesn't seem the least surprised about the bustdown. “Come on in,” he goes, “make yourself at home.”

I go, “Huh?” like, what are you, twisted? You
want
a bustdown? You
want
to get ripped? Are you mindsick or what? Except all I really say is “Huh?” because the rest is implied, which is a word I later got from the Ryter.

“I heard about the Bully Bangers giving me up,” he says, like it's no big deal. “Bound to happen sooner or later. Help yourself, son. Everything of value is over there in the corner.”

He points out a gimme tote bag with a few crumball items inside. An old clock alarm vidscreen, a baseball mitt so old it isn't molded plastic, a coffee machine with the cord all neat and coiled. It doesn't amount to much, but there's enough for a few credits at the pawn mart. Better than usual for the stacks.

“Go on,” he says. “Take it.”

Normally I would, but there's something not normal about the whole situation. Like the way he coiled up the cord to the coffeemaker. You know you're going to get ripped, and you do that? Is it some kind of trick or what?

It's like he knows what I'm thinking, because the next thing he says is, “This isn't my first bustdown. Just thought I'd make it easier for us both.”

“What else you got?” I say, closing in on the geez.

He smiles at me, which makes his old wrinkled face sort of glow, in a weird way. Like he wants an excuse to smile, no matter what happens. “What makes you think I've got anything else?” he asks, kind of craftylike.

That's when I see there are stacks of paper under the crate, and he's been sitting there in front of them, hoping I wouldn't notice. “What's this?” I go.

“Nothing of value,” he says. “Just a book, if you want to know.”

I scoff at him and snarl, “Liar! Books are in libraries. Or they used to be.”

He starts to say something and then he stops, like I've given him something important to think about. “Hmmm,” he goes. “You're aware that books used to be in libraries. That was before you were born, so how did you know?”

I shrug and go, “I heard is all. When I was a little kid. About how things used to be before the badtimes.”

“And you remember everything you hear?”

“Pretty much,” I say. “Doesn't everybody?”

The old geez chuckles. “Not hardly. Most of 'em, they've had their brains softened by probes and mindflicks, and they can't really retain much. Long-term memory is a thing of the past, no pun intended. The only ones left who can remember are a few old geezers like me. And, apparently, you.”

Now that I think about it, I know what he's talking about. I've always had a lot of old stuff in my head that everybody else seems to have forgotten.

“What else do you remember?” the geez asks.

“What do you care?” I say.

The geez gives me a look, like he wants to memorize me or something. “That's what I do,” he says. “I remember and I write it down. I take other people's memories, and I write those down, too. Of course, I change things to fit the story, but that's all part of the process.”

“Process? You mean like a word processor?”

For some reason he finds that amusing. “Not exactly. Instead of using a computer to process the words, I do it directly. From my head to the page, writing down the words by hand, like they did in the backtimes. Of course, I used to use a voicewriter like everybody else, but it got ripped a couple of bustdowns ago. So now I do it this way,” he says, showing me the stacks of paper covered with pen scratching. “Primitive, but it works.”

“Yeah,” I go. “You're doing it. But what are you doing?”

“Writing a book,” he says. “The story of my life. The story of everybody's life, and the way things were when there used to be books.”

“Nobody reads books anymore,” I tell him.

He nods sadly. “I know. But someday that may change. And if and when it does, they'll want to know what happened, and why. They'll want stories that don't come out of a mindprobe needle. They'll want to read books again, someday.”

“They?” I go. “Who do you mean?”

“Those who will be alive at some future date,” he says.

Those who will be alive at some future date.
I don't know why, but the way he says it gives me a shiver. Because I'd never thought about the future. You want to be down with the Bully Bangers, you can't think about the future. There's only room for the right here and the want-it-now. The future is like the moon. You never expect to go there or think about what it might be like. What's the point if you can't touch it or steal it?

“What's your story?” the geez asks, like he really wants to know.

I go, “I don't have a story.”

Almost before I get the words out, he's shaking his head, like he knew what I was going to say and can't wait to disagree. “Everybody has a story,” he says. “There are things about your life that are specific only to you. Secrets you know.”

Finally the old geez is starting to make sense. And there's something about him I sort of like — or anyhow something I don't hate — so I sit there and listen to him jabber on about his book and all the stories and secrets he's been writing down for years, since before his hair went white and he got old.

Anyhow, what happened is I left without taking anything, and when I came back the next day it was like the Ryter was expecting me.

“I've been thinking about you, Spaz. About how you can still remember things. Every writer needs a reader. I figured my reader wasn't even born yet, but here you are.”

I figure he must be making fun of me. “You think I care about those scratches you make on paper? Is that what you think?”

It's like there's an angry thing inside me that wants to bust out and hurt something, and right now what it wants to hurt is the old geezer, for laughing at me.

But his voice isn't laughing when he says, “I can teach you to read. That's not a problem. I'd like to teach you, if you'll let me. With a mind like yours — a mind that remembers — it won't take that long. A year or so, that's all. Maybe less.”

That's when I go ahead and tell him the real secret, the one I didn't want to tell him yesterday. “You haven't got a year. The Bully Bangers are going to wheel you.”

“You're sure about that?” he asks, looking worried. “I thought it was just another bustdown. I can handle getting ripped off, but I'll never survive getting dragged behind a jetbike.”

Something makes me tell him, “You got to run away. Save yourself. Now, before it's too late.”

The old geez sighs and looks at me with his soft eyes. “I'm too old to run. My running days are over.” He thinks about something for a while, and I'm waiting because I know whatever it is, it's important. “I've got a better idea,” he says. “You finish my book. Make it your own book.”

He's starting to tell me about the old voicewriter programs when all of a sudden the Bully Bangers come for him. I hadn't expected them quite this soon, but here they are, swarming through the stacks like wild things. Shrieking and laughing and screaming all at the same time.

“Save my pages!” the old geez begs me as they come through the open door and grab him.

“Everybody has a story!” he chokes out as the rope gets tighter and the engines rev higher. “All you have to do is listen! You're my hope for the future, son! You're the only one left! You're the last book in the universe!”