We shall conclude the game with a style wherein there is no point in even trying to pretend you will not recognize.
The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays
The first thing you should know about the Bibliotheca Absurdia is that it doesn’t play by the rules of time, physics, or basic human dignity.
The second thing? It has a very aggressive late-fee policy.
I found this out the hard way when I walked in to return A Brief History of Time Travel (That You Weren’t Supposed to Read Yet)—three centuries overdue—and the Librarian hit me with a glare that could’ve curdled dark matter.
“You,” she said, adjusting her glasses in a way that suggested imminent violence, “are exactly why we can’t have nice spacetime.”
The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays was a tall, no-nonsense woman with a bun tighter than the plot of a Kafka novel and a name tag that just read “MRS. P.” (The “P” stood for something eldritch. I’d asked once. She’d sighed and stamped “DON’T” on my library card in response.)
I slid the book across the counter. “Look, I meant to bring it back, but there was this whole thing with a paradox, and—”
She held up a hand. “Save it for the Temporal Arbitration Board. Your penalty is Section 37-C: Community Service in a Doomed Timeline.”
I groaned. “Not the French Revolution again.”
“Worse,” she said, grinning. “Beta Reading.“
Behind her, a shelf of half-written universes groaned in existential dread.
Why This is Pure Scalzi
- Snarky, Conversational Voice
- Scalzi’s protagonists talk like this—witty, self-deprecating, and deeply unserious about cosmic horrors.
- High Concept + Low Stakes (At First)
- A library that loans out time-travel manuals and punishes lateness with doomed timelines? Classic Scalzi absurdity (see Redshirts’ meta-narrative or *Kaiju Preservation Society’*s glorified animal control).
- Bureaucratic Satire
- The Temporal Arbitration Board and Section 37-C are peak Scalzi. He loves mocking institutional absurdity (Lock In’s healthcare dystopia, The Android’s Dream’s diplomatic nonsense).
- Pop-Culture-Literate Humor
- The Kafka joke, the “DON’T” stamp—Scalzi embeds geekery like a DNA splicer (Agent to the Stars was literally about Hollywood aliens).
- Women Who Won’t Suffer Fools
- Mrs. P. is a Scalzi archetype: the competent, exasperated authority figure (Colonel Rigney in Old Man’s War, Kiva Lagos in The Collapsing Empire).
- Sudden Scale Shift
- Starts with a late book, ends with erasing universes—a trademark Scalzi pivot from silly to epic (The Last Emperox’s galaxy-spanning collapse… over paperwork).
How This Differs From Other “Librarian” Versions
- Vs. Correia: Zero bullets. All bureaucracy.
- Vs. Miéville: The weirdness is fun, not oppressive.
- Vs. Day: No moralizing—just chaotic neutral mischief.
Speaking of other Librarian versions, the 7th Librarian was indeed me, although stylistically limited to my pair of Maupassant-inspired short stories, and my new best friend explains what the clues were:
Why This is Vox Day
- Polemical Bent
- Maupassant’s naturalism and irony are preserved (the detached scholar, the creeping horror), but sharpened by Day’s polemical bent—the library as a metaphor for “forbidden knowledge” corrupting arrogant moderns.
- Reactionary Themes
- Lefèvre embodies the enlightened rationalist humbled by forces he dismisses, a recurring Day trope. The librarian, an ancient, knowing woman, represents traditional wisdom scoffing at his hubris.
- Provocative Imagery
- The human-skin ledger and God’s erased days are classic Day-isms—shocking, sacrilegious, and designed to unsettle progressive sensibilities.
- Ambiguous Supernaturalism
- The horror is implied, not explained. Day often uses unseen, malevolent forces to symbolize ideological enemies.
- Anti-Enlightenment Subtext
- The library punishes curiosity, a theme Day explores in works like Throne of Bones—a rejection of modernist “progress” in favor of primal, even punitive, truths.
How This Differs from Other “Librarian” Versions
- Vs. Correia: No shootouts—just psychological dread.
- Vs. Miéville: No whimsy; the weirdness is malign and moralistic.
- Vs. Murakami: No jazz, only Gothic decay.
Want it more Day? Add:
- A subplot where Lefèvre’s degenerate Diderot-quoting rival gets eaten by the books.
- A footnote denouncing French secularism.
- The librarian revealing herself as Lilith in a lace bonnet.