what's Schrödinger's paperback?

[noelu]

Just finished the wonderfulGuards! Guards!as my first discworld novel.
In the dedication, Terry mentioned "too bad we never used Schrödinger's paperback".
I wonder what that means?

 

[Tonyblack]

The dedication goes:

<snip> And also to Mike Harrison, Mary Gentle, Neil Gaiman and all the others who assisted with and laughed at the idea of L-space; too bad we never used Schrödinger's Paperback . . .

This is just my assumption, but Schrödinger was one of the founders of Quantum mechanics and, presumably, when you apply Quantum to a paperback you get L-space.

 

[MongoGutman]

Presumably if you put a paperback in a locked library with a bunch of students there is no way of knowing if the book is being read or not (unless, of course it has mucky pictures in it). The duality of it's read/unread state could be the crotch of the trouserlegs of time and following one or other of the trouserlegs could lead one into an alternate library.

 

[chris.ph]

i thought it was just a posh way of saying you cant judge a book by its cover, as you cant tell what the book is like until you open the cover in the same way you cant tell if schrodingers cats alive until you open the box

 

[Dotsie]

I would guess it's an in-joke, an idea thrown around but L-space was funnier without it. I like Mongo's version though

 

[AgProv]

It's the one that you could have sworn was around here a moment ago,the one that goes missing at exactly the moment when you need to refer to it.

 

[Hunter]

Thank you all for your answers, this last post helped a lot with my translating. Oh, by the way mine is going to be the first translation of the book (Guards! Guards!) in Farsi (Iran). I just started today and was wondering what was he referring to. I knew he had something to do with Schrodinger's Quantum Mechanics and his idea of L-Space had the same thing to do with Schrodinger's K-Space theory. But I just didn't quiet understand aforementioned gesture, but dear AgProv's comment cleared it all. Because in the text after he says, "too bad we never used Schrodinger's Paperback", he goes on saying, "This i's where the dragons went."

Spoiler

And now it makes perfect sense. Because later on in the novel the dragons suddenly reappear and disappear when called upon.

Anyway, thanks a lot AgProv, and noelu for making the topic so I could find this amazing site.