Pleasure on the Stand

Pressing his nostrils against the displayport of the Barns & Noble mega-store, Lookat stared at the damned and metamorphosized trees before him. Wood, once called trees and home to the holey woodworms, the only natural source of the pulp material, perverted into paper for perusal and transported to this place, this place where the newest book about the outcome of the visions of God Emperor Leto II, the Great Tyrant and son of Paul Muad'DIBA, who was himself the son of Duke Leto I of House Atreides, one of the many aristocratic houses which ruled a futuristic yet feudal universe, and Jessica, his Bene Gesserit witch concubine and, unbeknownst to him, daughter of his arch-enemy the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen of House Harkonnen, who ruled Giedi Prime, a planet orbiting Ophiuchi B and not a nice place to live or even visit, as well as being brother of St. Alia of the Knife and husband to the tragic Chani, who dies giving birth to twins, one of whom was Leto II, known as the God Emperor or Dur or Guldur or "Goodtime Lee" to the other frequenters of Selim's Bar and Grill in downtown Keen, would soon go onto the new offerings stands....

Ask this of a thing: What is it in and of itself? What is its individual make-up, its essence, form, and matter? Its purpose in the world? Its duration?

'Cause Glenda and the Munchkins want to know: Are you a good book? Or a bad book?

(Or short story in the case of the original upon which the above was based, of course.)