@velexiraptor I remember a short story in which humanity finally discovers interstellar travel and galactic corporation immediately sues humanity for patent infringement. Interstellar tribunal sentences humanity to sell Earth to afford payment.

@velexiraptor I would check out all the alien books so god dang fast

@velexiraptor *puts out an ILL for the hitchhiker's guide*

*many generations pass before the book arrives*

@velexiraptor Expired: Where they still have finite "quantities" of material stored in digital formats.

@velexiraptor this is kind of the premise of one subplot in the novel Constellation Games, except instead of books it's trying to get their old video games and their emulators for posting to a video games review blog

http://constellation.crummy.com/

@velexiraptor To a degree, this is John Varley's "The Ophiuchi Hotline"

@velexiraptor inspired: humanity finally discovers interstellar travel and wins galactic nobel prize, since noone else figured it out yet.

@velexiraptor Your book is now available to be picked up at the nearest library branch to you, currently in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system

@velexiraptor as a recovering librarian, I dig this

@velexiraptor In a classic old SciFi short, it's discovered that the extraterrestrial empire is in fact an intergalactic postal union.

I forget if this is Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, or another.