This month's "Flames" is a rare watch at the artist at work, showing how I write this column every month.
Mike and Nancy's machine here. Start talking.
Hi Cuz, this is Corbett. Listen, if you're still planning to flame about the misuse of the word "product," don't do it. I looked into it and "product" without a preceding article is not an error. In fact it makes a useful distinction. "A product" is something produced for sale, but "product" without the "a" is stuff produced for sale. With "a product," you conceive of the thing before you write the marketing plan, and with "product," it's the other way around. Take a look at David Gerrold's piece in the New York Times Book Review, I think it's the April 29th issue. He sort of says that a science fiction novel is "a product," while a fantasy novel is "product." Although we're hearing the usage more all the time in the software industry, it probably just represents wishful thinking on the part of sales types who wish they were peddling something as ephemeral as Andre Norton novels. Later, man.
Beep.
Mike and Nancy's machine here. Start talking.
Michael. This is Stan. I heard that you were going to be writing about assigning credit for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set, which would seem to be the same species of question as who's buried in Grant's Tomb or who writes "Swaine's Flames." But if, in discussing Mandelbrots and fractals and chaos theory, you get around to assigning credit for the invention of chaos, you might consider Mr. Pournelle. He's brought more than his share of chaos into our industry, in a Manor of speaking, and I understand he's in the Soviet Union now, so you can defer repercussions, should he be unamused. Jerry Pournelle in the Soviet Union is itself an amusing concept, don't you think? I have it on good authority that he gave as his reason for going that he wanted to go there before the only place a communist could be found was on an American university campus. Must go; I have some deviltry to advocate. Take care.
Beep.
Mike and Nancy's machine here. Start talking.
Mike, it's Oliver. Dig this: Now that the sordid saga of est and the founding of Computerland is being serialized in PC Computing and a biography of Philippe Kahn is in the works, it's time to do the blockbuster Silicon Valley movie. It's a great subject, better than Wall Street, better than Vietnam. I see it as a pretentious big-budget epic with a lot of box-office stars and dialog straight out of the soaps, and I've got some thoughts about plotlines and casting that I'm hoping you can run by your readers. Like, picture Tom Cruise and Rick Moranis as two kids who build a computer in a garage, right? They become insanely rich, but it goes to their heads. The Moranis character tries to produce a rock concert, but he has a nerd's taste in music. The Cruise character throws tantrums and bullies everybody but has incredible charisma and personal magnetism. Eventually he's kicked out of the company but comes back by inventing a sexy black-box computer, which will be played by a Cromemco Z2D. In a separate plotline, what's his name, you know, the nerdy kid who plays Paul Pfeiffer in The Wonder Years, is a software magnate who's always in these heavy meetings with three-piece suits from IBM. But at the same time he's battling it out with John Candy, who plays a rogue, try-anything-once software developer selling compilers on street corners. He plays sax at Moranis' rock concert, so there's a tie-in there. Then we've got Bill Murray drifting in and out of things as a disk jockey who gets into software and becomes the spreadsheet king, but he runs around in a Hawaiian shirt all the time, and toward the end of the film he's giving peptalks on software design. Suck in those guts, guys, we're Software Designers. You get the idea. He represents the creative spirit. Oops. Got another call. Let's do lunch.
Beep.
Mike and Nancy's machine here. Start talking.
Michael. This is Stan again. It occurred to me after my last call that there is in fact some question regarding who writes "Swaine's Flames." You should know that someone is circulating the rumor that you compile the column by transcribing answering machine messages. I suspect your cousin Corbett of starting that one. A more disturbing one is that your cousin Corbett has himself been writing the column for the past year, and that it's entirely fictional. Since I have made one or two appearances in "Swaine's Flames," would that make me a fictional character? That would be a shallow existence, to live only in prose. The only consolation would be to have the last word.
Beep.