" The pages were dry and brittle, crackling as Renfrew turned them. From long exposure to the new methods of making books he had forgotten how a line of type could raise an impression on the other side of the page, as if the press of history was behind each word. The heavily leaded letters were broad and the ink a deep black. The ample margins, the precise celestial drawings, the heft of the volume in his hands, all seemed to speak of a time when the making of books was a signpost in an assumed march forward, a pressure on the future. "

― Gregory Benford , Timescape