My prediction about Potter...

Actually, I'm not going to make any plot predictions. Instead...

Well, it's now yesterday's news (literally!) that Last Harry Potter leaks online.

All I can suggest is that it would be beyond utter and thorough brillance for the publishers themselves to have deliberately leaked false versions of the book. Decoys, as it were... (Get it?)

Can you just imagine? It might dissuade some folks from continuing to try to get an illicit preview copy if they think that one (or more) is already out there. Plus, you'd have thousands of rabid Potter fans reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of alternative versions in the days before the release... only to announce - at, say, 11 pm on the 20th - that they were all hoaxes. Why, it would be a public-relations (not to mention, security) coup!

It may not turn out to be true... but I hope that it is! It would be such an artful blending of art and reality, fact and fiction... revealing the continuities (even simulacrum?) between the power (and illusion) of both Harry's magic in the world of the books and that of the Information Revolution in the Internet of our own... "Confundus," anyone?

UPDATE: Apparently, some folks on Metafilter have much the same suspicions that I do (although maybe less charitably...)

Still, in the ensuing discussion, there were some priceless "spoilers" mentioned, like...
  • "Voldemort is Keyser Soze."
  • "Rosebud was the name of his broom."
  • "A naked Harry wakes up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and Bob Newhart!!!"
  • "Harry actually dreamed the whole rescue, and is really still in the torture chamber. Oh, and Hermoine is a man."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The New York Times had 5 authors conjecture on endings for the 7th book. The best one had everyone killed but Hermione, who at the end sits down in a coffeeshop, and realizes she can write her experiences up as fiction and make money. But first, she'll need to come up with a pseudonym. "J.K. ..."