Smuggling Books and Botching Searches

[going_boldly]

This one is stumping me.

I'm looking for information about book smuggling- specifically, about buying, selling, publishing, hiding, and transporting books within a police state with a culture of censorship.

Comments

[channonyarrow]

I'm sorry if this is an idiot question, but I'm assuming from your search terms that your characters must actually smuggle the books; the books cannot be converted to, say, audio form (if audio even exists in your 'verse) or, as is done in Fahrenheit 451, memorised, right?

[alextiefling]

I was going to mention samizdat. It's a good starting point.

[going_boldly]

Thank you for this comment: I now have this whole history of copier regulation to add to the fabric of the story.

[lilya7]

I remember reading something in an interview some time ago - about how some books were banned in the Soviet Union but almost everyone had read them anyway.
The woman being interviewed said it worked like a kind of chain mail: you got the book, you copied it in two-three days (or rather nights) and passed it along to other trusted people.

I also remember a bit about things like rock'n'roll LPs being brought into the country by the children of amabassadors and diplomats returning from abroad - you know, diplomatic immunity and all that. I don't think it was from the same interview, though.

I'm sorry I cannot provide a link - it *was* a long time ago. You might try specifically researching the Soviet Union.

[jalendavi_lady]

According to Princess by Jean P. Sasson, the Saudi Arabian royal family was doing the same sort of 'bring in things past the religious authorities when returning home from abroad' until at least 1991 (there was a change in the balance of power between the royals as a whole and the religious authorities after the Gulf War according to Sasson, and she didn't have much information about what was happening after that point).

I'd expect that someone who could skip or be only given a quick once-over at customs (or a similar internal checkpoint) would be able to move contraband from one point to another.

[going_boldly]

Yeah, unfortunately customs isn't something that my characters have to go through. There are only three powers on the planet, one of which is in mutual isolation with my central country, and the other of which is supposed to be in mutual isolation, but trade heavily with the black market in my central country- no government officials involved who aren't there to try for a profit, ideally. There is a portal to Earth, but that's heavily guarded enough that most of my characters wouldn't have even thought of being within a hundred yards of it before the old government fell. I'll keep general smuggling tips in mind, though. Thank you!

[necropalice]

Google Ulysses with Shakespeare & Co, or try Sylvia Beach.

I have no idea how much information there is online, but the book The Yellow Lighted Bookshop has a whole chapter on smuggling books from the Shakespeare & Co around the world during the Nazi occupation.

[going_boldly]

Thanks!

[xtricks]

Might try the history of 'zines and see if that's useful. 'Zines might suit because it's a decentralized system of book publication.

Also, basically, just look at general smuggling techniques -- it doesn't matter if it's books or a chunk of heroin (assuming that police state dogs can be trained to sniff out books, just like drugs). Books like heroin need to stay dry, are solid, relatively inflexible etc.

[going_boldly]

Thank you!

[going_boldly]

a) There is the possibility of having audio, but it's not as widely used as text because it's easier to trace, and the equipment for playing audio is something that's only really available to people in the business class and up.

b) It's a culture I'm pretty much making up out of whole cloth, so that's definitely something I can explore. Most of the taboos I have so far are topics you don't talk about and things that you don't want to do to anyone, rather than things you would want to look at/touch.

Thanks for the helpful prompts!