Could William Hope Hodgson Have Imagined Being Read Without Paper?

I’ve been rereading William Hope Hodgson’s collection of stories Carnacki the Ghost-Finder.

The book was published in 1913. I first read it in paperback form in a rat-infested coldwater tenement in Maryhill, Glasgow. That building was demolished decades ago. Now I’m reading the book on a Kindle in an air-conditioned house in the Sonoran Desert, a place that would kill me but for the technology that keeps the heat at bay.

It occurs to me that the Kindle, and the air-conditionin...