La Fin Des Livres

A satirical speculative piece set at a gentlemen's club where attendees respond to a scientist's lecture by forecasting cultural and technological futures, especially the decline of printed books. Through imagined scenarios and illustrations, it predicts spoken news delivered by recording devices and telephone networks, home audiovisual dramatizations replacing print, photographic reproduction satisfying mass tastes, and publishers producing never-printed electronic texts. The tone mixes humor and social critique, portraying readers' fatigue with print, shifts in taste and media economies, and the artistic consequences of mechanical reproduction.