I have a fascination for long chains of logic, with each piece following from the last. I wrote this one just for my own amusement, based slightly on the discussion in Freeman Dyson's book Disturbing the Universe . I couldn't think of where to publish it, so I sent it to Asimov's Science Fiction , where it appeared as a guest editorial. Hari Seldon lied to you.
Truth really is, as they say, stranger and more convoluted than fiction.
In the middle ages, cloth was made from hand-spun flax. Sometime in the mid thirteenth century, however, the spinning wheel, invented in China, was introduced in Europe. Paper is a relatively new invention. Before paper, books were made from parchment. You make parchment from the skin of a lamb.