I am happily reading L. Ron Hubbard’s 1940 novel Typewriter in the Sky. I purchased a used hardcover copy on-line a while back, and am finally getting around to it.
If you’ve seen the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction you know the basic idea. Except that Hubbard invented the idea more than eighty years ago in Typewriter in the Sky.
Without giving too many spoilers, there are resonances here for anyone who has ever pondered issues of personal destiny or the limits of free will. As sentient beings in a contingent universe, what are the limits on our powers of self-determination?
To what extent are you an individual with freedom to decide your fate, and to what extent are you actually defined by whatever deity or celestial clockwork sent you hurtling into motion at the start of your life? And in the end, how much does it matter?
In any case, Typewriter in the Sky is a great read. It’s fun, wild, fast paced and completely original.
And it’s actually worthy of that often terribly misused word “Meta”.