Dispatches | December 13, 2008

The Ghost of Christmas Future, everyone will agree, is the most awesome and hardcore Christmas spirit of all the spooks and specters in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

His spectral cohorts, Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, are like a couple of hippie high school teachers, whereas he’s like that tyrant prof who ruined your 4.0 GPA in grad school.  They’re like, “You could do better. Try harder.” Ghost of Christmas Future’s like, “You fail!” He hands back your paper–no marginal comments, no encouragement. Only judgment.

We here at The Missouri Review respect that. We like folks who call ’em like they see ’em, or foresee ’em, in this case. So in that Spirit … er, spirit, get ready to take your scary, black, hooded cloak out of mothballs and plug in your fog machine, because it’s Ghost of Christmas Future time!

Guide us away from our reflective, cautiously hopeful present and into the swirly mists of an age yet-to-come. Lead us through the alleyways of our post-“still-calling-it-an-economic-downturn” cities. Will there be bookstores? Libraries? Literary magazines? Will there be … paper? Will there be coffeeshop musicicans? Or coffeeshops, for that matter? Or coffee? Or musicians?

Point the way, Spirit.

And for goodness sake, tell us how we may sponge away the writing on this stone!