Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)

by Dan Simmons

By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments. By the Hegira, ninety-eight percent of the Hegemony’s population had no reason to read anything. So they didn’t bother learning how to. It’s worse today.

‘It’s perfect.’ ‘It’s about loneliness,’ I said. ‘It is loneliness.’ ‘Do you think it’s ready?’ I asked. ‘It’s perfect . . . a masterpiece.’ ‘Do you think it’ll sell?’ I asked. ‘No fucking way.’

‘Yeah, well, we changed our minds after Transline’s resident AI read it.’ I slumped lower in the flowfoam. ‘Even the AI hated it?’ ‘The AI loved it,’ said Tyrena. ‘That’s when we knew for sure that people were going to hate

My next book appeared five standard months later. The Dying Earth II picked up where The Dying Earth left off, in plain prose this time, the sentence length and chapter content carefully guided by neuro-bio-monitored responses on a test group of 638 average hardfax readers.

Each of us knew in his or her heart that he or she was a true artist of the word who merely happened to be commercial; the others were hacks.