Battlestar Galactica

THE SERIES FINALE of Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) still generates controversy among the show’s activist, networked fans. For good or ill, the epic four-season melodrama, laced with visionary robots, planetary vistas, and spectacular battle scenes, wrapped itself up well enough to earn a disturbingly large slice of the unfolding currency of our hive mind. As television viewers, as fans, as immersion addicts leaning on the Epicurean side of the unconscious, we were vindicated by the ending. The way the plotline dovetailed with our own present and then revealed it in a new light when we

print April 2010

THE PAPERBACK REVOLUTION: A SELECTION

Life has no shape; literature has.
—Northrop Frye, “Renaissance of Books” (1976)*

NOTE: Some say publishing is dying. But the paperback revolution (1932–) isn’t threatened by new technologies like the e-book and print-on-demand. To generate titles, the revolution promotes revolution in all fields. The revolution works alongside all other modes of content distribution, such as the book-club edition, the comic, the chapbook, the hardback, and the magazine, to locate the real-world minimum value of a book. There’s been a counterrevolution, however, and it is threatened by the new technology. The