Well, you've probably guessed I'm a Type B writer. It was always easy enough to find an excuse not to write... and the Mac made it even easier! Now winter is coming on, I've missed a dozen deadlines, my family is starving, and bill collectors are pounding on the door.
Thank God for the people at VarleyYarns®!
When they heard of my plight they rushed over with a typewriter, reams of paper, and a package of pencils.
I know it will be a long hard path back to sanity...... but with the help of VarleyYarns®, I think I can lick it!
"DT" Oakland, California Born Again!
That's what I told my friends when I finally "made the switch" to a word processor. The ease, the speed, the versatility... I began buying new programs as quickly as they came out. I even got to
"road-test" a few of them, developed by friends in the industry, before they were available to the general public. I really liked the MacPlot at first. When you "Booted it up," MacPlot would suggest alternate story lines... while at the same time conducting a global search of all stories written by anyone, anywhere, at any time, to see if an idea was "old hat." Soon all my friends had copied it and were using it, too. Then came MacClimax!, which analyzed your prose for the "high points," and added words and phrases here and there to "punch it up." You've all heard how a word processor can aid you if you decide to change a character's name in the course of a story. With MacCharacter, I was able to change a whimp into a hero, a Presbyterian into an alien suffering from existential despair, or a fourteenth century warlord into a Mexican grape-picker... all with only a few keys... all without lapses in story logic! Before long I had them alclass="underline" MacConflict, MacDialogue, MacMystery, MacWestern, Adverb-Away. VisiTheme, MacDeal-With-The-Devil...
Then I noticed a strange thing.
I'm a Type A writer, like Mr. "SK/Bachman/Goldman/ETC." I'm not happy unless I'm writing most of the day. And now, writing was so easy I could simply write a first line, punch a few keys, and sit back and watch the story write itself. It was so easy, I was miserable. Now, in today's mail, comes MacFirstline, but I don't think I'll run it. I think I'll kill myself instead.
Now where's the MacHara-Kiri suicide-note-writing program...?
Sad, isn't it? And there isn't even enough time to tell you of the incalculable amounts of money squandered by writers on expensive systems that were obsolete within a few weeks' time, or to print the countless other testimonials that have been pouring into VarleyYarns® since this crusade of salvation began.
We're trying to help. Won't you? Only with your support can we stamp out this dread killer, this hidden disease called Computaholism. Write your Congress-person today. Form a committee. Give generously. Be sure to vote.
And don't forget... to buy and read Berkley's VarleyYarns®.
Dear John, All right, enough is enough. I don't think you realize it, but I put my career on the line over your last insane request. If you think I'm going to publish and mail that diatribe, you've got another think coming.
I went so far as to show it to our lawyers. You said you disguised the names, but how many writers do you think there are in Halifax, Nova Scotia? Or in Maine, for that matter. And do you have any idea how much money that guy has? Enough to keep you in court for the next twenty years.
Maybe I'll regret this later, but there are a few things I've been dying to get off my chest, so here goes. First... was that some kind of crack, back in your first ad? Something like ''as fine a book as the economic climate will allow''? Let me tell you, we editors work hard and we do the best job we can. So we don't usually have much of an advertising budget. So DEMON was printed on newsprint. So sue me, okay?
As for your horror stories about excessively prolific authors... boy, don't I wish! I could say a thing or two about missed deadlines, that's for sure. And did you read what Norman Spinrad and Algis Budrys had to say about your last two epics?
So much for the inherent superiority of the typewriter.
TITAN parts four, five, and six are due at the end of the month, don't forget. You may not find the editors here at Berkley quite so forgiving the next time you ask for a deadline extension.
Yours, Susan SUSAN ALLISON
BERKLEY PUBLISHING
NEW YORK
DEAR SUSAN, HOLD EVERYTHING! NO NEED TO GET UPSET. HELL, YOU
DIDN'T THINK I WAS SERIOUS, DID YOU? THE THING
IS, SEE, I WAS TALKING TO HARLAN ELLISON THE
OTHER DAY, AND WHILE HE AGREED WITH MY STAND
AGAINST THE WORD PROCESSOR, HE FELT THE WHOLE
VARLEYYARNS BUSINESS SMACKED OF TOO MUCH SELFPROMOTION.
BUT BEYOND THAT, AS YOU MIGHT HAVE GUESSED FROM
THE HOLES ALONG THE SIDE OF THE PAPER, I'VE
BOUGHT A WORD PROCESSOR. (SORRY ABOUT THIS
TYPEFACE: MY LETTER-QUALITY PRINTER IS ''DOWN''
AGAIN. I'M USING AN OLD ''WORDSPITTER'' PRINTER
I BORROWED FROM THE ESTATE OF ''DT'' IN
OAKLAND.)
I'M WRITING THIS ON AN EXXON OFFICE SYSTEMS
''ANNIE'' COMPUTER. AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, EXXON
GOT OUT OF THE COMPUTER BUSINESS AFTER A FEW
YEARS OF POOR SALES, SO I GOT THIS MACHINE AT A
BARGAIN-BASEMENT PRICE! FOR ONLY $5000 I GOT A
MAINFRAME MORE POWERFUL. THAN THE ONE NASA USED
TO SEND MEN TO THE MOON IN 1969, A DISK DRIVE, A
''SANDY'' PRINTER, A ''PUNJAB'S CRYSTAL''
MONITOR SCREEN, AND A LITTLE DEVICE SIMILAR TO
THE APPLE MOUSE, WHICH EXXON CALLS AN ''ASP.''
I'VE BEEN TOLD THIS IS WHAT IS KNOWN AS AN
ORPHAN COMPUTER, BUT IT SHOULDN'T MATTER, AS IT
WILL RUN SOME OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE, AND THE
SALESMAN--A MR. PANGLOSS--ASSURES ME EXXON WILL
CONTINUE TO SERVICE IT AND PRODUCE MORE
PROGRAMS.
SO FAR HE'S BEEN AS GOOD AS HIS WORD. THE LASERDRIVEN
HYPERSPEED WHIRL-WRITE ''SANDY'' PRINTER
HAS BROKEN DOWN EIGHT TIMES SO FAR, AND THE
SERVICE MANAGER, MR. GOLDBERG, IS ALWAYS HERE
WITHIN A WEEK OR TWO. (HE'S HERE RIGHT NOW--HEY, RUBE!--SO PRETTY SOON I CAN PUT THE PRINTER ''ONLINE''
AGAIN. HE SAYS IT'S JUST RUN OUT OF
PHOTONS AGAIN.)
I'VE BEEN HAVING A BALL. I'VE USED THE
MACWARBUCKS PROGRAM TO BALANCE MY CHECKBOOK AND
PLAN MY FINANCIAL FUTURE. MY OUTPUT OF FICTION
HAS REALLY INCREASED. YOU'LL RECEIVE SHORTLY, UNDER SEPARATE COVER, TWO TRILOGIES AND FIVE
OTHER NOVELS. JUST THIS MORNING I TRIED PHONING
ANOTHER NOVEL TO YOUR OFFICE VIA MODEM, BUT
EITHER MY MACHINE OR YOUR COMPUTER ROOM OR POOR
OLD MA BELL SEEM TO HAVE LOST IT. OH, WELL, NO
BIG DEAL, THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT ONE
CAME FROM!
TO FACILITATE YOUR ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT'S
WRITING OF MY CHECKS, IN THE FUTURE I SHALL SIGN
MYSELF WITH THE UNIVERSAL WRITERS CODE (UWC)
SYMBOL YOU SEE BELOW, RECENTLY APPROVED BY THE
WRITERS GUILD. SO IT'S GOODBYE, JOHN VARLEY, HELLO 2100061161... BUT YOU CAN CALL ME 210, IF
WE'RE STILL FRIENDS.
barcode
Press ENTER
"This is a recording. Please do not hang up until—"
I slammed the phone down so hard it fell onto the floor. Then I stood there, dripping wet and shaking with anger. Eventually, the phone started to make that buzzing noise they make when a receiver is off the hook. It's twenty times as loud as any sound a phone can normally make, and I always wondered why. As though it was such a terrible disaster: "Emergency! Your telephone is off the hook!!!"
Phone answering machines are one of the small annoyances of life. Confess, do you really like to talk to a machine? But what had just happened to me was more than a petty irritation. I had just been called by an automatic dialing machine.
They're fairly new. I'd been getting about two or three such calls a month. Most of them come from insurance companies. They give you a two-minute spiel and then a number to call if you are interested. (I called back, once, to give them a piece of my mind, and was put on hold, complete with Muzak.) They use lists. I don't know where they get them.