One of the great Darwinian events in human history was the development of the opposable thumb among primates. I’ve been speculating lately whether the next stage of our evolution will be the dramatic enlargement of our thumbs from generation to generation until they are twice their present size, powerfully muscled, and narrowed at the fingertip to the diameter of a pencil eraser. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Homo Pollex Maximus – BigThumb!

The purpose of the Intelligent Designer in steering our anatomy towards Superthumbitude is of course to enable our species to enhance its mastery of composing text on cell phones, Blackberries, and other handheld electronic devices. And, if an article (“Ring! Ring! Ring! In Japan, Novelists Find a New Medium: Budding Scribes Peck Their Tales on Cellphones; Ms. Nakamura’s Hurt Pinkie,” The Wall Street Journal, 09/26/2007) is any indication, the first people on whose hands the condition will manifest itself is the Japanese. For, as it turns out, young cell phone users are not merely writing messages on their cells, they’re composing whole novels. The cell phone fiction industry is booming there, with downloads of some books running into the hundreds of thousands of copies.

Whatever you might think about the phenomenon, as a literary agent I have a take on it that I suspect not too many others do, and this is it: on any given day, countless numbers of novel manuscripts by countless numbers of authors circulate among the tiny number of viable trade book publishers capable of publishing them. And for all but a happy fraction, it is all in vain, for the odds against a manuscript being accepted are astronomical.

But – if cell phone fiction were to catch on in the United States, two huge problems would be solved in a single keystroke. In this new publishing model, the Great Frustrated Unpublished would at last find a mass audience interested in reading what they have to say. And the paradigm shift that has eluded the ebook industry — reading books on handheld reading devices – would receive a rocket boost.

Let’s hope that the phenomenon takes hold in the United States and we see a tidal wave of downloadable carpal tunnel fiction. So authors, get those thumbs ready. But if your pudgy digits can’t quite handle the process, don’t worry – your children’s, or your children’s children’s, will.

- Richard Curtis

(Links: Wall Street Journal, Wired, and The Inkwell Bookstore Blog)