Tue 1 May 2007
The Little Little Little Book of Calm?
Posted by anaglyph under Art, Science, Technology, Words
[47] Comments
In a sterling attempt to redefine the concept of light reading, Robert Chaplin at the Nano Imaging Facility of Simon Fraser University recently created the smallest book in the world by using a using a focused-gallium-ion beam to ‘carve’ the letters of a story in silicon at a resolution of 40 nanometers*. The tale Mr Chaplin chose for this escapade is written by Malcom Douglas Chaplin who I guess we can presume to be related. It concerns ‘Teeny Ted from Turnip Town’ and his successful entry in the local Turnip contest. You can read all about Teeny Ted’s exploits with the aid of your handy electron microscope and still have time to apply another coat of Powdery Mist to the wainscotting before tea.
Robert even has a blog where you can read more about his creation and congratulate him personally (I love the web!).
Anyway, this whole episode prompted me to thinking that Teeny Ted is just the foot-in-the-door for the new shelfspace-saving Nano Book phenomenon that is certainly upon us. Obviously, a great place to start would be re-releasing the Classics in Teensy Tiny form. Of course their content would need to be diminished in some way to be more in keeping with the format.
It will not surprise you to learn that I have a few suggestions…
•A Tale of One City
•Lesser Expectations
•20 Leagues Under the Sea
•Gone with the Breeze
•Disagreement of the Worlds
•A Clockwork Cumquat
•Even Littler Women
•The Insignificant Gatsby
•The Old Man and the Condensation
I daresay my faithful readers will have more…
Special Cow Announcement: Moo! Oh, sorry, I mean: Owing to the high calibre of suggestions so far for Condensed Version Classics to be etched at nano scale, I have decided to award a prize to the entry that makes me laugh the most. It will be a proper prize mailed out in the actual Real World Snail Mail.
Judge’s (ie my) decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into. I’ve always wanted to be able to say that. I’ve also always wanted to say Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead!! but so far no proper opportunity has presented itself. Maybe somewhere in the next year’s worth of posts…
47 Responses to “ The Little Little Little Book of Calm? ”
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[…] Thank you Cowerati for your wonderful submissions for ideas for Classic works of literature suitably reduced in scale for publication as Nano Editions, a la Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. […]
Weak New World
The Sound and the Irritation
The Minor Dignitary of the Rings
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Neighborhood
One Strolled Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Dante’s Spark
The Twinge and the Pleasantness
Insect Farm
1284
The Hobbit (whoops)
Less Miserables
The Wit and Wisdom of George W. Bush
RaJ: I love your suggestion, btw. My favorite so far.
The Grapes of Irritation
The Translucent Man
Littler Red Book
I might enjoy a lot of the books mentioned more if they were a touch smaller.
The Satisfied Wives of Windsor
All’s Well That Ends O.k.
The Old Man and the Pond
For Whom the Bell Tinkles
The Sort-of-Red Letter
and…
Moby Prick (or, The Minnow’)
The Guinness Book of World Record
Here’s Waldo
Mrs. Frisby and the Rat of NIMH
Charlotte’s String
Of Mouse and Man
Leaflet of Grass
Lady Chatterley’s Quickie
A Brief History of a Moment
Ah, yes, all leaping into the fray as I knew you would! I should have made it a contest with a prize. In fact, so I will!
Official Cow Announcement: There will be a prize to the entry that makes me laugh loudest. So far it’s between RaJ’s Less Miserables and Universal Head’s unexpurgated The Hobbit. No restriction on entry numbers! Go Team Cow.
One Minute in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The Droplet, The Droplet
Aesop’s Foible
Brave New Worm
The Loan Musketeer
Mein Achselhöhle
Withering Heights
The Hour of the Triffid
Treasure Isthmus
The Boy From Snowy Rivulet
The Wine of Wrath
… and I’m trying to do one on Iris Murdoch’s “The Sea, The Sea”, but then you just get John Banville’s “The Sea”.
Read mine, Cissy.
Embarrassment beyond my worst nightmares!!
The Lone Musketeer
I kinda like The Loan Musketeer. Like the guy who rides a white horse and works for the bank – The Loan Arranger.
And Cissy – perhaps The Grapes of Annoyance?
I was tring to do concentrated or condensed – so concentrated grapes would be wine, but I guess I was drawing too long a bow.
“Less Miserables” made me snort, definitly my favourite so far (curses).
And Pil – I did read & enjoy your “The Droplet” – it was my inspiration.
My fave is Lady Chatterley’s Quickie
I guess I’ll just go back to reading Fydo Evsky’s “The Id”
Try ‘The Raisins of Wrath’
also-
The Crones of Eastwick
The Bridges of Madison Township
Hamlette
Call of the Mild
The Iliad and The Curiosity
1983
The Big Nap
Indigestion Comes to the Archbishop
Still Here with the Breeze
The Kitten, the Crone and the Closet
Pizza Hut-Five
Whimper, and Other Poems
Who’s Peeved at Virginia Woolf?
The Adequate Magician of Oz
Winnie-the-Fart
Winnie-the-Fart will be tough to beat.
Catcher in the Whey
Slaughterhouse .5
Brunch of the Mildly Accomplished
Whine, the Liked Country
and of course the classic:
Prometheus Tetherd
…
(Im pretty sure thats by Beckett.)
Joey: HAHAHAHAHA!!! GOOD ONE!!!
Casey’s in the running with Slaughterhouse .5 (and I’ll ignore his blatant suck-up to the judge) as is Colonel Colonel with Hamlette. Joey jumped the rails by creating his own nano-novel. Chickie also made me laugh with The Okay Earth
I’m still puzzled by Pil’s Mein Achselhöhle (elbow?)
How’s about:
The Naked Brunch
Single Indemnity
The Coffee Break of Innocence
The Life of Pi to Four Decimal Places
HughT makes his first comment on The Cow and manages to make me laugh a lot. Contender.
The Art of Spat
Near the Madding Crowd
Journey to the Center of Top Soil
A Room Without a View
(That last one is The Invisible Man)
A Life by A.B.Face
(gotta keep up the Australian content)
My Armpit by A. Schicklgruber
Sucking up? Wha?
How about if we counti in the Bard’s classic, The Late Autmn of Our Fretfullness.
Possibly, Vaguely East of Mesopotamia.
If not that, then surely A Shed Partitioned should be included.
Godot Arrives on Time
A bit lame, but I felt compelled to contribute:
Around the Room in 80 Seconds
Henry I/V
The ShortlyEnding Story?
The Incomplete Works of Shakespeare?
Ok I really will stop now.
War and Peas
Remembrance of Things Passed
Hardly any Ado about Nothing
A Midsummer Night’s Microsleep
The Son also Rises
The Partly Bible
The Andromeda Twinge
Where the Mild Things Are
The Little Commoner
(Le Petit Paysan)
The Non-Core An
My Backyard According to Garp
Zen and the Art of Tricycle Upkeep
Jonathon Livingstone Quail
Alice in Fairly Boring Land
A one-off from HughT’s: Life of 22/7.
Wot? No science fiction? Time for a new thread…
How about Fahrenheit 4.51?
OK – maybe that’s technically not science fiction.
20to1: A spacewalk ? (yep – it was a book)
O wait! Rev likes Poe – here’s a suck up –
The Stumble of the House of Usher
(Thanks to Bean for asking “What’s smaller than a fall?”)
Microcosmos
Origin of Individual
“Bean”? I have no idea how that happened. Those last two were me…
JR: There appears to be a bug in WordPress that fills in the ‘Name’ field of the Comments form with other poster’s names. Cissy Strutt first pointed this out to me and after a lot of detective work I was unable to find any logical reason for it happening.
Because you’ve seen it under the new Cow template, I can now rule out any problem in the template itself, so it must lie in the underlying WP code.
I have reported it to WordPress as a bug.
ALL: Thanks for your great entries in the Nano Book competition, which I now declare closed. The Cow salutes your cleverness and wit (and comprehensive knowledge of the Classics). I had many laughs along the way.
The winner will be announced in the May 4 post.
Actually, I know Robert Chaplin. He’s an artist, not a scientist, but he sure does know a few helpful people. He designed the book and is the official publisher (it’s got an ISBN number carved into one of the plates) and his brother wrote it. You can read more about it here:
http://raincoaster.com/2007/04/18/teeny-ted-from-turnip-town-the-text/
raincoaster: Thanks for the xtra info. Appreciated.