Column 40, 8000 Plus 40, January 1990
ELECTROMAGNETIC ETIQUETTE
Dear Miss Magnetic Media,
I've become acquainted with a famous author who nervously mails `security copies' of his novel-in-progress to friends. This is great because you get the perk of reading the books before they hit the best-seller list. When his latest was published, I naturally returned the disks with the draft versions. Back came a thank-you letter which I thought slightly chilly. Have I blundered?
-- `Worried.'
Miss Media replies: You have encountered a problem of etiquette so novel as to be absent from the guidebooks. See below....
Dear Miss Media,
I'm a starving writer and recently made my first sale. As recommended by that bigmouth Langford, the print-out's covering page said: `Text available on 3" disk in LocoScript or ASCII format.' The magazine was glad to avoid retyping, so all was well, except that months later they hadn't returned the disk. When I enquired, they sent it back sort of reluctantly and said something about being afraid of insulting me! Should I now feel insulted, and if so, why?
-- `Impoverished'
Miss Media replies: This embarrassment arises from friction between different social and financial strata in computing. It began when well-heeled organizations and computer owners chose to become uppity about returned disks. `We don't ask people to send back letters so we can clean the paper for re-use,' one imagines them sniffing. `We can afford endless new disks. Returning them implies that we're penny-pinchers. What an insult!'
Alas, a PCW user who mails many disks cannot afford this haughty contempt for bank managers. The big-time attitude was formed by the traditional IBM 5 1/4 " disk (which in bulk costs as little as 20p) or the cheapest 3 1/2 " equivalent (perhaps 50p), rather than the 3" Sugar Special at a minimal couple of pounds.
Miss Media suggests that much heart-searching might be avoided if senders of material on disk were to inscribe the label No need to return this, or alternatively, Please return after copying files -- thanks.
Those objecting to the latter plea should contemplate the virtues of Green policy. Causing correspondents to buy new disks uses up resources; recycling old ones doesn't. Conversely, if you're so eager not to insult others, do you throw away their disks to avoid demeaning yourself (scandalous waste!), or furtively re-use them? Be honest, now.
Dear Miss Media,
Are you aware that cardboard mailing boxes for floppies cost more than new disks? Ecologically it's better to throw disks away than mail them back.
-- `Megacorporation'
Miss Media was addressing the long-suffering PCW owner, whose sturdy little disks can be safely posted in used jiffybags, or even ordinary envelopes (cardboard stiffeners are advised). Doubtless there's small hope of persuading corporations, no matter how Green, to soil their squeaky-clean image by mailing all disks with cardboard protection cut thriftily from supermarket boxes. A pity.
Twice each blue moon, a disk is scrambled or cracked in transit. Accept this as our kindly post office's way of making you grateful for (a) keeping battered old disks for mailing; (b) retaining backups.
Dear Miss Media,
This public domain disk has me foxed -- there are no instructions, and I can't load the file READ.ME which might explain things.
-- `Baffled'
Miss Media replies: To book-lovers, that filename evokes some unpublished Lewis Carroll fragment in which Alice discovers a small text file called READ.ME and finds on doing so that it magically turns her brain to mush.
The READ.ME (or README.DOC, or READTHIS.NOW, or whatever) information might be in LocoScript format or `plain ASCII text'. Those accustomed to CP/M or other machines' MS-DOS will expect ASCII, and react by entering TYPE READ.ME at the CP/M prompt. Hardened LocoScript users naturally attempt to peep with E for Edit.
If it's ASCII, LocoScripters should create a new document and load in READ.ME via `Insert text' (f7 `Modes' in Loco 1; f1 `Actions' in Loco 2).
If LocoScript ... might it be suggested to perpetrators of READ.ME files that they use Loco 1, which everyone can read, and not Loco 2, which frustrates unregenerate Loco 1 users? To comfort those who try CP/M and TYPE, a message in LocoScript's `identify text' (editable through `Modes'/`Actions') is a shrewd ploy. This text, preceded by the letters JOY, is what TYPE will display when READ.ME is a Loco file; its 30 characters allow room to declare, `Read me with LocoScript, clot!'
Miss Media retains an old-fashioned preference for clearly printed instructions on archaic paper.
Dear Miss Media,
I sent my novel on disk to this writer I know, but she says she's scared of inserting strange disks for fear of viruses. How can I reassure her?
-- `Plague Vector'
Miss Media can only applaud the brilliance of your friend's excuse for not reading your ghastly book, while answering with enormous regret that it's unfounded. Were a PCW virus ever to emerge, it would be spread by infected `start of day' disks, or perhaps `.COM' program files in CP/M. Using your own LocoScript to examine alien document disks is always safe.
Dear Miss Media,
Har har CAUGHT YOU OUT! You said reading disks was ALWAYS SAFE what about this then. I pull back the shutter, put on a streak of superglue and sprinkle with fine carborundum. Anyone reads it, they need a NEW DRIVE, brill eh?
-- `Smartass'
Miss Media replies: There is a time for measured considerations of etiquette and there is a time for petrol-soaked blazing crosses to be hurled through windows. In your case one is reluctantly compelled to the latter course.
Careless tea- or coffee-drinkers are warned that a dried spill on the disk surface may have almost as exciting an effect as carborundum....
Column 41, 8000 Plus 41, February 1990
POST-1989 MISCELLANY
Having recently returned from a longish trip to the northwest USA as guest of a science fiction convention, I planned to write an in-depth analysis of the PCW market over there. Here's a complete transcript of my research notes....
Diligent Investigator: `How popular is the Amstrad PCW in these parts?'
Many American Literary Persons: `What the hell's a PCW?'
Half of them own IBMs and half use the incredibly expensive (at least in Britain) Macintosh. Although the statistics show that a tiny band of American PCW users does exist, they seem as difficult to trace as that statistically common family with 2.4 children.
Over there, it appears, the PCW came on the scene too late: makers of cheap IBM clones had carved up the penurious end of the market in a bloodbath of price-cutting which we didn't see here until much more recently. End of in-depth analysis.
8 or 9?
The cover says February, you're probably reading this in January, and I'm writing at the height of the Xmas horror: we SF fans who've spent our lives reading about time distortions always feel right at home in publishing.
So, as I write, fond relatives are still ordering software for the family PCW addict and failing to specify whether the computer is an 8256, 8512 or 9512. [Or, now, a PcW 9256 or 9512 Plus.] Let's draw a veil over those who fail to mention that it's actually, ahem, a CPC 464. Indeed this happens all year round, and often it's the computer owners themselves who don't choose to reveal intimate facts like model numbers to strange software dealers.
Of course it's frustrating to receive a disk which won't start up your machine or can't even be read on it. No disk which starts up the 8256/8512 will do so for the 9512 or vice-versa, and inevitably the 9512's 720K disks remain inscrutable to 8256 owners. My own outfit, Ansible, reckons that the best guess is to send a 180K disk for the 8256/8512, with a note explaining that 9512 owners should either (a) copy the programs to a 9512 CP/M start-up disk as so simply and beautifully described in the manual, or (b) send it back for recopying. To save their supplier from idle hours of staring out of the window, most people choose (b).
So ... do remember to mention your machine model when ordering programs or dropping tactful hints to relatives. I admit that sensitive, intelligent 8000 Plus readers rarely need this exhortation. Ansible's main quarrel is with uncultured chaps who forget to state the machine number, sign the cheque, etc., and then make witty remarks like: `Don't waste my valuable time with questions -- it's your job to get these things right.'
Disk Full, or Not?
Another problem I have to explain from time to time concerns the exact meaning of `free space' on a disk. The awkwardness doesn't arise if you only ever use LocoScript, or if you never use it at all, or if you keep separate working disks for LocoScript documents and other files. But if you put Loco files on the same disk as those produced by CP/M programs (perfectly legitimate, but see below), you'll sooner or later meet the Great Disk-Full Paradox.
`100k free', says the Disk Manager menu in LocoScript. Who could disbelieve it? `No room on disc,' insists an otherwise apparently reliable CP/M program. `ERROR: DISK WRITE NO DATA BLOCK - A:DOCUMENT.$$$', reports CP/M's dear old user-friendly PIP, which is its way of saying, `No room on the disk, squire.'
Old hands at the PCW game will already be wearing knowing smiles. This is all to do with the dark mysteries of LocoScript `groups'.
Groups started as a CP/M idea for letting a number of different users, or groups of users, each have their own `private area' of a disk. When you type DIR in CP/M you normally get a directory of Group 0 (zero), and most people vaguely think that only LocoScript can see Groups 1 to 7.
In the old days, user number 1 would type USER 1 in CP/M, and the A> prompt would change to 1A>, and he or she would have access to all the Group 1 files. In fact this still works in CP/M on the PCW. Enter USER 7 and then DIR, and you get a listing of the Group 7 files.
CP/M doesn't stop there; the USER group numbers go up to 15. This is where complications appear. Loco uses Groups 8 to 15 solely for Limbo files. When a Group 0 file is erased or edited, the old version is simply relabelled as being in Group 8 and can (as we know) be hauled back. Likewise Group 9 is the limbo for Group 1, Group 10 for Group 2 and so on.
The Limbo groups aren't counted in LocoScript's calculations of free disk space: files there are living on borrowed time, and Loco will erase them `properly' the moment it wants the space.
To CP/M, though, Groups 8 to 15 contain ordinary files with an equal right to live. A much-used Loco disk will have a crowded Limbo area and will look pretty full to CP/M.
These different views of the higher-numbered groups explain the cryptic warnings in manuals: stick in a CP/M disk containing a needed file which happens to be in Group 15, and LocoScript might liquidate it as an expendable resident of Limbo. But who these days uses the groups, except in LocoScript? A few lucky hard disk owners, perhaps.
Finally, the obvious solution. When you want a CP/M program to write text to a Loco document disk (perhaps for later `Insert ASCII' inclusion into a Loco file), first select Loco's `Show Limbo' option and erase some suitably unwanted-looking Limbo files from the revealed list.
Another solution: you could always have saved the CP/M program output on a freshly formatted disk, but where's the technocratic fun in that?
Column 42, 8000 Plus 42, March 1990
SWINGS & ROUNDABOUTS
An old friend called to bewail his feelings of computerized obsolescence. His dearly loved PCW is worn and tatty, and people (he says) laugh at him for clinging to a machine bought three whole years ago. `Is it time for a change?' he asked with a technophilic gleam in his eye. `State of the art. High tech. Fast lane. Maybe in matt black to match the music centre....'
Well, possibly not black -- the business computer industry seems committed to pale grey or beige cases, ingeniously toned to highlight the dingy evidence of actual use. (Why is the filthiest key on my PCW the J?) But a faster system does seem to be a lure.
I cheered him by making up and quoting the hardware version of Parkinson's Law, which is that your expectations of the most fabulous new machine will expand until, sooner than you think, you're grumbling at its limits.
One instance of the law is known to writers of this column as Terry Pratchett's Insight: `There's no such thing as a fast computer after the first three days.' By this time, the super new machine has become normal (i.e. faintly if not quite annoyingly sluggish), while your old one is now so absurdly slow as to be unusable.
Indeed, strangely enough, I find my IBM word-processing system doesn't seem that much astonishingly faster than LocoScript. The IBM may run at ten times the PCW's speed, but against that is the fact that the software I use can handle a full-length book as a single file. In accordance with the Law, the eager writer does exactly this, ungratefully takes the facility for granted, and spends his or her time moaning that as a consequence, moving from end to end of a document occupies the same sort of interglacial aeon familiar in PCW legend....
Optional Extras
`You mean it doesn't come with software?' said my pal in bogglement, and fainted when I explained that the market leader amongst IBM word processors cost £425 plus VAT, admittedly negotiable to much less by avoiding posh computer dealers with nice suits and carpets.
Indeed, the pricing policies of multi-national software companies are a real running sore in computing. I still gnash my teeth at being an authorized dealer for a package we'll call ExpensiveWord, and finding that the suppliers (a) flogged software in bulk to mail order box-shifters who could make a profit selling them at less than the discount price quoted to authorized dealers; (b) in answer to enquiries, advised prospective customers that `the going rate' was less than we as dealers could buy it for, let alone sell it for.
But I digress, as usual. Although it's barely possible to get by with public domain stuff, anyone seriously planning to invest in an IBM system should be careful to budget a few hundred for word-processing software alone.
Other extras include a printer, rarely part of the deal, and a printer cable, and perhaps a complicated mass of communications software, interfaces and cables to allow transfer of documents from the old PCW.
I fell into the `extras' trap this year when tempted by a special offer of a DIP Pocket PC, better known under its `Atari Portfolio' alias. It came with batteries and built-in ROM software, and is the first portable computer which both has a real operating system and does go in the pocket instead of being luggage.
Immediately, it didn't work. Extra item number one was a fresh set of batteries. Then I ran into software bugs (never try to save an empty document, for example) and had to reset the machine. This meant losing everything in memory. Extra number two was therefore the equivalent of a disk: a battery-backed memory card whose price made my eyes water.
Extras three and four were needed to transfer stuff to my desktop computer: an interface box and a peculiar cable which a Tottenham Court Road shop first couldn't believe in and then had to make up specially.
Reading the small print that came with the interface, I was instructed to buy extra number five in the form of a mains adaptor, since transferring files is such a frightful drain on the batteries....
It's a sweet little machine, though, and when I've dredged up a technical manual and/or another sort of cable (extras number six and seven), I'll report on how handily it can work as a roving accessory to the PCW.
One safe bet is that although the Pocket PC behaves like a tiny IBM, the still-delayed IBM LocoScript will not work usefully with its strictly limited 40x8 LCD screen.
Yuppie Bait
Another friend has just bought an Amstrad PPC: imagine her delight at finding it came with a free cellphone. Now she too could chat with her stockbroker while whizzing along the M4 fast lane and working the fax machine with her other hand.
Once again, there were some extras:
`Connecting' the free cellphone costs £60. Line rental is £25 per month, plus call charges. Insurance against loss is compulsory, at £3.50 a month. You pay a further £3 a month `invoicing charge'! And none of the above includes VAT. All payments must be via a direct-debit authorization allowing the cellphone mob to take what they like, when they like, from your bank account. `Credit worthiness' is a condition of contract, and as a display of trust in this quality they demand a deposit of £200 against all the above.
As my software partner said to me, `We're in the wrong business, mate.' It certainly sharpened our irritation at motorway punters yakking obliviously away on their wretched phones while overtaking: now we know they're all vastly richer than us....
Column 43, 8000 Plus 43, April 1990
STALKING THE WILD EDITOR
8000 Plus is read by hordes of aspiring authors, all eager for insights into the strange ways of the editorial mind. In hope of gratifying this prurient interest, I polled SF/fantasy editors and asked what they like least about word-processed submissions. Out of curiosity I also asked what percentage of such material was recognizably produced by LocoScript. Now, in a flourish of inadequate sampling, I reveal all.
... Or nearly all. I was soon reminded that editors are constantly overwhelmed by their work of sifting the million or so books submitted each year, to decide the 50,000-odd that are published. Gollancz was busy changing editors during my survey, and Pan was busy relaunching its fantasy, SF and horror lines, while my contacts at NEL and Futura must have been busy in the pub.
Malcolm Edwards of Grafton Books began with a careful distinction: `I'd think that of the unsolicited UK submissions, a quarter to a third are done on the old Amstrad. These days, published authors tend to have a better class of printer, at least, and often have cheap IBM clones.'
Note that all unpublished authors, barring a few famous politicians, media stars and murderers, will land on the `unsolicited' heap -- alias the slushpile.
Malcolm Edwards's unfavourite things are: `(1) authors who think that the ribbons last as long as the computer, and that the extra wait involved in printing out NLQ pages is more important than my eyesight; (2) the fact that authors who no longer have to retype everything seem to use the time saved in writing longer books instead of using it to write better books of the same length.'
Deborah Beale of Century Hutchinson also has me nodding in agreement: `It drives me mad if I'm sent continuous paper print-outs, where the author hasn't bothered to separate the pages. Also I loathe right-hand justification. The monotony of such a neat page sends my eyes funny, and often, sort of like the white-noise hiss of air conditioning, sends me to sleep.'
Continuous paper is simply difficult to manage, especially for editors who nobly catch up on their reading in the train, armchair or pub.
David Pringle of Interzone bewails the side-effects of this magazine's increasing circulation: `The quantity of unsolicited submissions still seems to be going up and up. While one ought to be grateful, it's true that they can be such a pain in the [now, now -- Ed.]. Perhaps my main complaint is the obvious one that so many people don't bother to obtain a copy of the magazine before submitting. There seem to be endless thousands of aspiring SF writers who get all their information from the Writer's and Artist's Yearbook, and nowhere else....'
The point is that every magazine has its own indefinable `feel'. If you write a thrilling story headlined RAMBO VICAR IN SEX ROMP MERCY DASH, its undeniable connection with religion may not impress the editor of Church News. Likewise, a scholarly and literate article on UFOs would obviously be rejected out of hand by the Sunday Sport. Unless you like wasting postage, it's vital to study your market.
David Sutton of Fantasy Tales castigates the evils of `cramming a 30-page story folded into four in a standard letter envelope ... text running across whole width of page with no discernible margins ... no indentation of paragraphs ... no return postage!'
This reminds me of once receiving a carefully unsealed envelope which had been laboriously embossed with several artistic impressions of 10p pieces. The letter inside achieved a final stroke of unconvincingness with: `PS, I hope your postman does not steal the return postage enclosed....' Full marks for enterprise and economy. The MS went into the bin.
Another niggle from David Sutton: `I occasionally get a MS with the title page set out as though produced on a desktop publishing system, with a flourish of different typefaces for title, author, word count, address, and computer system used! There's no reason why I should hate this except jealousy....'
That is, editors want functional, readable text, and react badly to ornaments which are the typographical equivalent of submitting work on deckle-edged lavender paper impregnated with perfume.
Wayne of GM magazine doesn't confine his gripes to amateurs: `Writers either can't count or badly miss the option of a word counter -- especially on Amstrads. We informed readers that we were after short stories of up to 1000 words absolute maximum, to take up one magazine page. What happened? The average length of Amstrad-composed material submitted to us was around 1800 words!
`When we asked "name" authors to submit short stories of no more than 4800 words, they too went over the top. Most averaged around 6500 and one established author exceeded 8000. The excuses: the amateurs are honest and state that excitement plus lack of a word counter made them overestimate. The professionals put it down to artistic licence.'
If you don't fancy investing in word-count software, it's worth hand-counting one big chunk of typical print-out in your normal format, to give a basis for future estimates. Be careful not to include scanty pages of dialogue -- `What?' he said. `You know,' she snapped. `No I don't.' `Yes you do.' `No I don't....' -- unless of course you write like this all the time.
Finally, most of the editors in my amazingly wide-ranging survey felt that around 25% of their submissions were detectably matrix-printed on a PCW. GM, being largely a specialist market (SF/fantasy games) with strong amateur involvement, was exceptional at 65%.
To draw statistical conclusions from this sample would be mean. Instead, please consult Havelock Ellis's Psychology of Sex to learn the standard deviation.
[Most of these editors have since moved jobs.]
Column 44, 8000 Plus 44, May 1990
SOFTWARE DEATHWISH
If it weren't a violation of copyright, I'd be tempted to suggest that every Amstrad monitor should come stencilled with the large friendly message DON'T PANIC. So many people seem to prostrate themselves before their PCWs in an ecstasy of panic, that a time traveller from ancient Greece could reasonably deduce the machine to be a small household shrine of the great god Pan.
This state of terror resembles the Examination Dream suffered in later life by so many victims of education. You're confronted with a nightmare list of questions which cannot possibly be answered, even if you still knew anything about the forgotten subject. Cold fear takes you by the short and curlies, your ribcage suddenly becomes three sizes too small, sphincters begin inexorably to loosen....
For all too many PCW owners, this whole complex of terror and mental paralysis is instantly conjured up by the CP/M prompt message (readers of a nervous disposition should skip what follows): A>.
Software people who try to explain things over the phone are all too familiar with the symptoms of panic. One is a sort of wild, despairing haste, leading to exchanges like this.
EXPERT: `Now I want you to do exactly what I tell you. First, put in the disk with MASTER written on it. Then -- '
VOICE ON TELEPHONE: `Yes yes I know that bit,' tap tappety tap, `I'll just start it up,' tappety tappety, `and now Oh God! It's just not working, it keeps saying question marks, I'll have to turn the thing off and start again,' CLICK, `Sorry, which disk did you say?' tap tappety....
EXPERT: `Stop! Stop hitting keys and listen!'
A related symptom is that sufferers tend to get stuck in a loop, repeating some quite simple error (wrong disk in place, or a command slightly mistyped) under the firm conviction that they are following the exact procedure in the instruction book.
EXPERT: `Let me go through this keystroke by keystroke. Type these letters....'
TELEPHONE: `That's exactly what I've been doing all ...' (Long pause. Very querulous tone.) `It never did that before.'
I sympathize with the victims, who have usually worked themselves into a ragged emotional state before calling the `expert'. Unfortunately, frayed nerves can lead to the helper's getting a hard time.
EXPERT: `Let's see if all the right files are there. Type DIR and tell me what -- '
POSSIBLE REPLY 1 (splenetic): `Look, I know what disk I put in, and what's more I know all about listing directories in CP/M, so you needn't treat me like some stupid kid, thanks very much.'
POSSIBLE REPLY 2 (half-sobbing): `Oh dear, you go on about typing DIR and all this technical stuff, I just can't understand any of it, why won't you stop trying to blind me with science and just tell me what to do....'
This last response approaches the final stage of panic which I think of as `software deathwish'. Stand back! I am about to commit amateur psychology. What seems to happen is that the panic victim becomes emotionally committed to not understanding, to not solving the problem. The buried reasoning might go roughly as follows:
`I'm not an idiot. But I'm totally baffled and frustrated by this software. It must be incomprehensible. This bloke who keeps saying it's really quite simple is obviously lying through his teeth. I'm not going to listen to him. (Besides, if it truly is simple, what does that say about me? Better not think about that.)'
Sometimes, trying to help callers who have reached this state, one is left with the uneasy feeling that immediately after hanging up they plan to hurl the PCW from a high window, and to jump right after it.
This being a far from perfect world, I don't say that all software is dead easy to learn (much is idiosyncratic) or that all experts are helpful (the most likely response to a call for support is `Just putting you through', followed by twenty groan-laden minutes of Muzak). However, here are some hints on how not to make things worse by succumbing to panic.
• Allow yourself time to master new programs. Non-swimmers do not as a rule leap into the Channel, point themselves towards Calais, and reckon on picking up the techniques of breast-stroke as they go. Just so, the way to learn that new spreadsheet is not to try and move your complete business records system to it on the day the tax return has to be posted.
• Check all software if you change computers; there's nothing more panic-inducing that the sudden discovery that a familiar program has stopped working. That roof-rack you bought for the old Reliant Kitten will have to be replaced now you've traded it in for a Rolls: the same goes for all 8256/8512 start-of-day disks if you move to a 9512. But the pink fluffy dice from the Kitten are Rolls-compatible and may be transferred -- as can most 8256 programs that run with CP/M.
• When ready to scream with rage, remember the magic mantra `RTFM' which constantly trembles on the experts' lips. This stands for `read the effing manual'. Just this once, forget all the short cuts which you `know' are OK, turn off your imagination, and follow the instructions step by laborious step. If the program still doesn't work, you now have my permission to scream.
• After screaming, stay clear of the wretched computer until your pulse rate is back to normal.
• When you're as experienced as I am, you'll meet problems with a tranquil ... oh sod it, another missing address mark, and that's my only copy of the column, and the deadline is ... AAAARGH!
Column 45, 8000 Plus 45, June 1990
UFO FOLLIES
It's a great tradition of 8000 Plus that when you delve into the most arcane fields of human endeavour -- toad-sexing, or science fiction fanzines, or societies for the preservation of fruit-bats -- you'll sooner or later find someone labouring away at the paperwork on a PCW.
Therefore it came as no surprise when Jenny Randles, who is apparently the only full-time professional UFO researcher in Britain, mentioned that her books like Abduction (Headline paperback, 1989) are indeed produced using LocoScript 2 on a PCW8256.
At first I was leery of these researches, since UFOlogy can seem such a dubious subject: SPACE ALIENS TURNED MY PCW INTO AN OLIVE, and all that. It was with great relief that I found Jenny to be a leading member of what purely for the sake of argument I'll call the non-loony school of UFO thought.
Here in Britain, UFOlogists of this school suspect that the weirder reports from honest-seeming witnesses (close encounters, abductions, etc.) result from strange mental states. Not madness or DTs, but something more like lucid dreaming or those `out of the body experiences' which seem so real to sufferers. This is fascinating stuff which might well provide light from an unexpected angle on how the human brain is wired -- and how, like a computer, it can go into unintended loops or even, temporarily, crash.
Unfortunately there are problems in holding views like these. The first I could guess; my jaw dropped when I heard about the second.
The first snag for a sober researcher is that, as Jenny confirms, this kind of UFOlogy won't make you rich. `My 14 books normally clock up about 2000 sales in hardback, with rare paperback excursions -- giving my bank balance a status that even Argentina won't envy.' What sells is hyperbolic stuff about tangible alien spaceships full of little kidnappers with enormous eyes and faces made of putty. This is why UFOlogists in America, where this `extraterrestrial hypothesis' dominates, tend to be wealthier than our home-grown ones.
Personally I have strong opinions about America's best-known UFO pundit, the dreaded Whitley Strieber of Communion fame. Jenny will not discuss him at all, owing to the second snag in being an unsensationalist researcher who disputes theories of aliens. This is that moneyed Americans are quite ready to go to court over these issues.
For example, Jenny's and Peter Warrington's Science and the UFOs (not a bestseller) is acknowledged by Strieber as an influence: almost immediately after reading its account of `UFO abductions', he is supposed to have started remembering the similar experiences whose highly coloured write-up in Communion made him rich. When in a radio interview Jenny made the obvious joke about this sequence of events, she was threatened with a libel suit.
Here I must declare an interest. Strieber's new novel Majestic devotes two pages to a detailed rehash of the fictional UFO story in my own 1979 spoof, An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871. I was not asked permission, nor offered a fee for the use of my original creation. But I'd better not make jokes about it on the radio, had I?
Worse is to follow. An even more bizarre American outgrowth of UFOlogy is the cult of the `MJ-12 papers' -- dodgy-looking documents which are supposed to be leaked US government records. They tell a tale of crashed UFOs, autopsies on little green bodies, global cover-up, and much more. This is supposed to have been successfully kept secret by every US administration since the 1940s! I myself support the document experts who reckon the papers are blatant forgeries, and who quote strong evidence for this view ... but I'd better not say so too loudly.
You see, Jenny said so last year. It's a nasty story, offered here as a warning on the perils of talking to the media -- as, in hope of pushing our books, all we writers sooner or later must.
In brief: the Manchester Evening News announced (uncritically) a public meeting in which Stanton Friedman, the leading US guru of MJ-12, would preach to the converted. Jenny, who lives nearby, felt she had a responsibility to give the opposing viewpoint. This was dismally written up by the paper as something which could be taken as a personal attack (with jazzy paragraphs starting ZAP! and POW!). Although Jenny complained at once of being misrepresented, the MJ-12 crew issued writs.
This is where I boiled over. For producing the offending piece, the MEN is being asked for £500, and its reporter for nothing. For expressing her dissenting view in what's supposedly a scientific debate, and despite having no control over the distortions which appeared, Jenny is being sued for £10,000.
Which could make her original letter to the Manchester Evening News the most expensive brief document ever to be printed out from Loco 2 on a PCW....
Surely this is outrageous. As Jenny says, `This sort of tactic has no place in serious debate on controversial issues ... it must be stamped out. This is why I have an obligation to fight on despite the horrendous difficulties of doing so.'
Writers shocked by what they see as persecution have set up a defence fund to help fight this expensive action. (I'm one of them.) Echoing the legendary fund-raisers of Private Eye magazine, it's called MJ-BALLS. Cheques made out to this worthy cause are welcomed at 17 Polsloe Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 2HL. This is a serious appeal.
As for Jenny Randles, her final, rueful comment to me was: `Perhaps the PCW tempts one into trouble because it's so easy to respond quickly to points you dispute -- a side-effect your readers mightn't have contemplated!'
As usual, the money ran out before the case got to high court (most `libel' cases could be rapidly settled by the common sense of magistrates, but our rules don't allow that). The MJ-Balls fund eased the pain of the inevitable settlement out of court. My thanks again to all who contributed.
Column 45 1/2, unpublished
AMSTRAD PPC BLUES
Like hordes of Amstrad Portable owners, I use the thing solely on the mains supply: it eats batteries with hoggish enthusiasm. One must harden one's heart against the constant plaintive requests `Please set time and date' and `Please fit new batteries'. There's a certain pleasant olde-worldeness about the resulting file dates, which indicate that I did stupefying amounts of work in the early hours of Tuesday 1 January 1980.
Last month, this idyll ceased when the external AC adaptor went quietly dead. After the usual checks on plugs, fuses, and whether a multimeter could detect any flicker of life at the low-voltage connection, I groaningly turned to the manual. It was time to wrestle with another Alan Sugar index.
Over the years, book publishers have developed a sort of tradition that the index should appear right at the back. What you find at the back of the PPC manual is a great wodge of previously unnoticed software licence agreements, full of warnings against making more than one copy of any supplied software (what, you're allowed only one start-of-day disk?).
The index is concealed just before this. After looking under `AC', `adaptor', `mains', `power' and `supply', you begin to try desperate long shots like `low voltage', `DC', `plug', `fuse', `connector' or `burnt out'. No luck. Mains power supply problems are eventually found on a page indexed under `troubleshooting, DOS', a surprise to anyone who thought the PPC's DOS operating system was a piece of software. The technical advice given is, `consult your dealer.'
After an abortive wrestle with the duff power supply's long and hard-to-remove screws (which, when loosened, left the box still sealed shut), I found a unindexed warning in capital letters on page 8, saying DO NOT REMOVE ANY SCREWS. Giving in, I let my dealer break it to me. `£40 plus VAT, squire. It'll take at least a week.'
Mysteriously, they found one in their storeroom two days later and charged only £25.94 altogether. My statistically unsound projection was that, on the evidence to date, the running expenses of a PPC will include some £8 a year for new power supplies.
Meanwhile, if you have the same PPC manual as me, the place to look for insufficient information about the power supply is under `setting up' on page 7, cunningly indexed as `setting up your PPC, 10'. One urgently emphasized bit of advice is to disconnect the mains plug when not using the PPC. I suddenly remembered I'd accidentally left it on all weekend. Does anyone do a bolt-on cooling fan...?
[This was part of a column vetoed by the current editor under the newly revealed Rule 42, "Thou Shalt Not Mention Other Amstrad Computers In This Magazine." Other sections of the column were inflated into full-sized columns below.]
Column 46, 8000 Plus 46, July 1990
DANGEROUS CORNERS
One nice thing about being a small computer company is that, depending whom you want to impress, you can legitimately call yourself Chairman, Managing Director, Head of Programming, Marketing Consultant, Chief Buying Executive, and indeed every prestigious title not currently wanted by the other director. The snag is that you -- that is, I -- have to do the work of all these imposing functionaries....
It was as Buying Executive that I met a fascinating example of real-life logical paradox. One gradually gets used to the pitfalls of trade price lists, such as having to detect by telepathy whether the figures include VAT (usually not, except sometimes) and whether `5% discount for cash with order!' applies to cheques (yes, but expect irritating delays while the cheque is tested for bounciness). The new snag came from bulk discounts.
We wanted CF2 disks. The minimum bulk order from a company which shall remain nameless worked out at over £100. Which was fine until I noticed that when you ordered more than £100-worth, the price per disk dropped. Great! I did the sums again, using the lower figure. Oops.
Bertrand Russell would have loved this. At the price for orders less than £100, my disks cost over £100, and at the price for orders over £100, they were only ninety-something, which raised the price to the higher rate for orders below £100, so....
A systems analyst would probably suggest, after pocketing a huge fee, that the neatest solution here would be a flat charge of £100 for every disk order in that dodgy region where the price keeps oscillating. Being a cynic, I suspected that the vendors might prefer avarice to logical elegance, and played safe with a blank cheque marked `not more than (the higher price)'.
This is how, in the world of computers, it can take half an hour of head-scratching to make one purchase. It also shows aspiring programmers how innocent-looking rules may lead to dangerous instabilities. The places to watch for problems are at a situation's edges or corners; for the disk purchase, the awkwardness comes where the price per disk veers in a rather ill-defined way to the lower rate.
Glitches often happen at extreme edges, at zero and infinity. That zero disks cost zero pounds isn't a problem. However, as a book reviewer I often receive parcels of SF costing nothing: when I flog the unwanted rubbish at 50p a copy, my percentage profit per volume is 100 times 50p divided by zero, which is guaranteed to boggle any business records program. Unless, of course, some programmer has incorporated the tactful message, `Division by zero? You can't do that there here.'
It wouldn't happen in real calculations? Think of this: a company, probably mine, makes zero profit in 1990. Whatever profit or loss it makes in 1991 will, if you're fool enough to express the change as a percentage, be infinitely better or worse than 1990's.
Another example which rather embarrassingly comes from real life: wearing my Chief Programmer's hat, I wrote some software which gulped LocoScript files and did nameless things with them. It was only interested in the text, and ignored headers, print controls for underlining, and so on.
But one chap's document made it seize up completely, leaving me baffled until I realized I'd failed to consider the extreme case. There was no actual text, and my program was no good at processing LocoScript files containing zero words.... After each word, and only then, it checked whether it was at the end of the file. The cure was to have it check before each word.
(I still haven't allowed for awkward folk who produce Loco documents of infinite length. As soon as someone announces an add-on hard disk with infinite capacity, I'll have to rethink that program again.)
Another time when I had to worry about the treacherous corner at Point Zero was in doing the astrophysics for an SF story. The easiest way to work out certain orbits, and the time it took before spaceship A collided with massive object B, seemed to be to simulate everything on the computer and let Newton's laws of motion and gravity take their course. (Forgetting Einstein's for the moment.)
Unfortunately the program tended to blow up shortly before printing out its graphs of what had happened. The gravitational attraction between A and B doubles each time the distance between them halves. For the first rough simulation, I hadn't bothered to allow for these objects actually having any size: as their separation shrank to zero the acceleration soared towards infinity, the figures got vaster than the computer's registers could comprehend, and the program pointed a last accusing error message at me as it died.
Obviously, if one object is little and the other a planet, the program should stop calculating and simulate a loud bang when the separation between their centres drops to whatever the planet's radius happens to be. Problem solved -- or only evaded? Suppose there's a tunnel right through the world and our spacecraft plunges in ... does it meet awkward infinities at the centre?
This is interesting. It turns out that, as with the disk price list or the difference between water at 99 degrees and 101 degrees, the rules change when you cross an invisible line. Once below the surface, instead of growing by the inverse-square law, the force of gravity now decreases sedately with distance from the planet's centre, and of course reaches a neat zero when you get there. Sanity returns.
Before turning this corner, the calculations had overflowed because of dodgy approximations and not thinking the problem through. Mea culpa. When I'd put it right and cranked out my distance/time graphs, I went around for days being smug and calling myself the company's Astrophysics Director. No one seemed to believe me.
Column 47, 8000 Plus 47, August 1990
AFTERMATH OF GLORY
When aiming these columns at aspiring book writers labouring on their PCWs, I may sometimes give the impression that heartache ends once your contract is signed, your advance banked, and your book in print. There are still grim days ahead.
What awaits you is the grimy face of marketing, the dark side of the sales force. The publisher's publicity department will arrange for you to promote your masterwork on local radio ... local, that is, to somewhere incredibly remote. After years of making such trips, many authors suspect that it's wiser to stay at the keyboard or the day job rather than traverse most of Britain to be patronized for about five minutes by a low-browed DJ who has neglected to read the book. `So, er um Mr Rushdie, you've written these er wossname verses about, about Satan, does this mean you're interested in heavy-metal rock?'
As for the other promotion you'll get.... Once I was a guest of honour at the World SF Convention on one of its rare visits to Britain, and my latest publishers were offered lashings of free publicity, with the prospect of selling stacks of copies to the thousands on thousands of SF fans being indoctrinated with my alleged wonderfulness at the event. So shrewdly did they seize this opportunity that not one copy of my novel was available throughout the entire convention.
Indeed, all your relatives, friends, acquaintances and long-lost schoolmates up and down Britain can be relied on to complain bitterly that they'd love to read your book but can't find it anywhere. No matter how many were supposedly distributed, it is an unwritten law of the book trade that all copies of an author's works are stripped from the shelves whenever said author, or anyone he or she once met in a bus queue, is so much as suspected of loitering in the vicinity. This is done for the humane purpose of protecting writers' egos from over-inflation.
The book industry's parting boot in the groin comes all too soon after publication day, when it becomes clear what your long literary toil has been leading up to: providing the vital raw material for the remainder trade.
Remaindering is simply the flogging off of `no longer profitable' book stocks at a trade price so low as to break the barometer. I recently had an unusual letter from one publisher. It was a personal note signed by an editor I knew, apologizing for a book's imminent remaindering, telling me how many copies were in stock, and offering me first chance to buy them at the price offered to remainder distributors.
This was astonishing. I was being informed about remaindering exactly as specified in my contract! That's not how it's usually done....
The normal routine is for some relative or friend in a far-flung county to mention that for months now, Cheap'n'Nasty Book Bargains just down the road has been selling your novel for peanuts. This seems strange, as your contract definitely says that remaindering won't even be considered for months yet, and that you'll be the first to know.
Authors become cynical about the fact that this unloading happens in remote places, as though to avoid any awkward questions from the actual writer. (One outfit, notorious in the trade, openly offers to dump remainders discreetly on the Continent.) Your editor feigns total bafflement; the evil deed has been done by mysterious `marketing people' who know nothing of your contract.
The point of informing you is that it gives you a chance to stock up with copies to cushion your retirement -- or at least insulate your attic. You could even buy the lot and avoid the stigma of appearing in remainder shops at all. Well, that's the theory....
I tried it. I bought as many pre-remainder copies of Book A as I could afford. They weren't that cheap, but the publisher swore this was -- as per contract -- the lowest wholesale price. Then I discovered stacks of them at half that price, retail, in Oxford Street. Result: after much aggro, a grudging refund.
There was similar trouble with Book B. I bought `the lot' ... and then found my market spoilt by cheap, dumped copies of the Australian edition which had somehow never been exported. Result: nothing to be done without a lawsuit.
Book C was remaindered early in breach of contract. This sounds illegal, but in practice all the breach does is terminate the contract: by remaindering, the publishers have washed their hands of you anyway, so they don't care. `Can I buy copies?' I asked. `We only have 20,' they replied, and instantly sent them -- with an invoice for some horrendous sum, three times the rate I was quoted by the remainder dealer who'd bought the rest. Result: when shouted at long enough, the publishers decided that the 20 copies had been complimentary ones all along.
Book D was also remaindered in breach of contract. By now I was learning to complain loudly and often, and with the aid of the excellent Society of Authors got an ex-gratia payment in partial compensation for the publishers' crimes.
Book E ... well, the message is becoming clear. When remaindering looms, you need to watch your publishers with laser-eyed scrutiny and be ready to complain until you're blue in the mouth. This is unfortunately not too good for author-editor relations (when, for example, you ask every week, `Have you remaindered me in breach of contract yet?'). But the price of solvency is eternal vigilance.
Meanwhile, I have this nightmare which starts: `Hello, this is 8000 Plus. We have 112,876 Langford columns in our warehouse and need the space. We can offer them to you at 25p each if you take the whole lot....'
Column 48, 8000 Plus 48, September 1990
DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
It is well known that everyone who is anyone uses a PCW -- I checked by looking back through four years of 8000 Plus, and the theory was amply confirmed. Not only does everyone use the PCW, they all write about it and all make the same LocoSpell jokes. (Perhaps there should be a five-year moratorium on anecdotes with hysterical punchlines like, `And for my name, it suggested Landlord, ha ha ha ha ha!')
Browsing in other standard works of reference, I idly wondered what bygone pundits of literature and reality have said about their PCWs. Here is a selection from what I found....
Macbeth's fatal flaw, besides ambition, was that he never mastered BASIC programming commands -- the software he sold kept coming back with letters of complaint. We but teach / Bloody instructions, which being taught, return / To plague their inventor.
His old mate Banquo, meanwhile, complained that although he had no difficulty getting his PCW to do trifling things like addition, he got into trouble with serious stuff like his VAT return: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray's / In deepest consequence.
James Joyce, after whom the machine was of course named, reviewed but in the end decided not to use LocoSpell: None of your cumpohlstery English here! Apparently he wasn't too pleased by what the spelling checker made of his more moving passages like: Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. (etc.).
Ambrose Bierce of The Devil's Dictionary fame had hard words for spelling checkers, too: Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. Literary critics suspect that he never mastered the feature which lets you add your own words.
St Paul lost his temper trying to set up baud rates for MAIL232 file transfer: Evil communications corrupt good manners, he jotted on a nearby scroll.
That obscure 19th-century poet the Rev. Cornelius Whur liked a nice, clean, shiny screen on his `Joyce', and recorded this preference in verse: What lasting joys the man attend / Who has a polish'd female friend!
But Andrew Marvell found the joys too long-lasting, especially when moving through a big document, and expostulated: Had we but world enough and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime....
The poet Longfellow had difficulty in upgrading from a low-tech quill pen, and kept hitting the wrong cursor keys: I shot an arrow into the air, / It fell to earth, I know not where. (Usually on the wrong page of the file.)
Percy Wyndham Lewis of the Vorticist arts movement tried, not very lyrically, to hymn his favourite software company: I said (and I always say these things with the same voice) / `Say it with locomotives....'
Byron found the CP/M manual incomprehensible, and cursed its author something rotten: Explaining metaphysics to the nation -- / I wish he would explain his Explanation.
Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah was even less enamoured of this manual, and suggested extreme measures: And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates.
Wittgenstein philosophically added, Wovon man nich sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen, which translates roughly as, `I couldn't understand the blasted manual either.'
But A.E.Housman, being a textual scholar as well as a poet, had no sympathy for people who can't follow the instructions, even in Latin: Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out, but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
Jonathan Swift was typically grumpy about the cheapness and ease of PCW word processing, and made some digs at it in one of the satirical bits of Gulliver's Travels: Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by [this] contrivance, the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, may write books in philosophy, poetry, law, mathematics and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. (I can't imagine how he left out best-selling novels.)
Hugo Gernsback, a much more awful SF writer, tried hard to predict the modern PCW in 1911 but got several small details wrong: He attached a double leather head-band to his head. At each end of the band was attached a round metal disc that pressed closely on the temples. From each metal disc an insulated wire led to a small square box, the Menograph ... He than pressed a button and a low humming was heard; simultaneously two small bulbs began to glow with a soft green fluorescent light. You could argue that with this gadget that `entirely superseded the pen and pencil', Gernsback came within shouting distance of describing glowing green screens and was the first SF writer to predict word processor disks, even if they're in a slightly unlikely place.... (By the way, I'm sure I've seen several pictures of the Menograph in Glen Baxter cartoons.)
Thomas J.Watson of IBM was obviously just jealous of Amstrad: I think there is a world market for about five computers.
Wordsworth found himself impressed by LocoScript's multiple alphabets but like everyone else became sarcastic about its speed: Characters of the great Apocalypse, / The types and symbols of Eternity.
And the forgotten James Grainger, in a 1759 epic poem which must surely have been dedicated to Amstrad (it's called The Sugar-Cane), lyrically pinpointed the common factor of all known software: By microscopic arts, small eggs appear, / Dire fraught with reptile life; alas, too soon / They burst their filmy gaol, and crawl abroad, / Bugs of uncommon shape.
Column 49, 8000 Plus 49, October 1990
GETTING TOGETHER
Writing is a lonely business, often made lonelier by family members who don't appreciate that the Creative Process involves hours of staring blankly at a blank screen while scratching your head, sucking your teeth, picking your nose, etc. Talking shop with others who understand this vital fact is half the charm of `writers' workshops' -- our subject of the month.
All those I've been to have a science-fictional flavour. The most demanding is the annual Milford SF Writers' Conference, started in the 1970s as a spin-off from the American event in Milford, Pennsylvania: the resourceful Brits held theirs in Milford-on-Sea, Hants. It's moved around since, and to those in the know, `Milford' is also a little-known SF spelling of `Cheltenham' [or `Margate'].
At Milford, a gaggle of SF writers fills a hapless hotel for a full week. You must have sold professionally (one sale will do), and must bring a stack of copies of your work for discussion: no one is allowed to shred others' stories without offering up their own sacrificial goat....
The daily Milford routine strikes me as a good general model for workshops. Each morning, everyone frantically reads and makes notes on that day's contributions. Each afternoon is a long critical session in which several pieces are discussed into the ground ... after which the conference staggers, pale and sweating, to the bar.
The system is designed to give everyone, no matter how shy, his or her say on every manuscript. Someone is chosen to start off (by drawing straws, by asking who actually wants first go at this MS, or by dictatorial decision of whoever's in the chair). Everyone in turn has a nominal three minutes to comment -- it might be a hymn of unsullied adoration, a devastating attack, or detailed DIY instructions for dismantling the story and putting it together so it'll fly better and further.
The victim in the hot seat can then reply to all these tormentors at any reasonable length. (It was at this point that one very famous SF author reputedly cried, `You bastards, how dare you find fault with Me?' -- and stalked out, never to be seen at a Milford again.) A final free-for-all discussion, a five-minute break, and the next MS goes under the microscope....
On one or two evenings, there will probably be a red-hot debate on some topic which, like erupting magma, overflowed the bounds of the timed afternoon sessions.
On the other evenings ... I think we'd better draw a veil over the libellous shoptalk, in-jokes and wildly silly literary games. It's always a great week, though always too expensive. The groan-laden morning after the final party is punctuated by eldritch screams as participants receive their hotel bar bills.
Much cheaper and much more frequent are the writers' gatherings confined to one day or weekend at someone's house. The discussion sessions tend to have much the same structure as at Milford; what varies is the reading of the actual manuscripts.
If you are well organized, they're circulated in advance by each contributor or by the current meeting's host. This host needs to send out reminders of everyone's address, and to exercise fascist control over the number of actual contributors -- unless the attendance is tiny, your brains will fall out should you try to give more than four or five stories the full treatment in one day.
Less efficient groups can ask people to bring many copies of their MSs to be read on the spot. In a one-day session, this always means hasty skimming by latecomers, and only the ablest critics will be able to muster more than `quickie' first reactions. There's a disreputable school of thought which says, `Who cares? It's the social side I come for.'
Totally disorganized groups, like the first and most enjoyable one I ever belonged to, madly rely on the stories being read aloud to the workshop members and commented on after a period of mature reflection lasting about five minutes. One aggrieved author said, `Langford, I could see you counting the pile of unread pages and openly calculating how much longer you had to suffer....' Others read their stuff so well that criticism of the actual words, however lacklustre, is lost in admiration of Performance Art. Totally unfair, of course.
(Still, several regulars from this series of chaotic meetings later became SF household names. You'll all have heard of L.Ron Hoover, Arthur C.Kellogg and Isaac Amstrad.)
Even more economically, far-flung groups can conduct these critical sessions in slow motion, by post. One popular system has a packet of MSs circulating as a round-robin parcel, each recipient passing it on with (a) critical notes on the contents; (b) a new contribution. When the package comes round again, you remove your by now tatty and coffee-stained MS, and read the huge wad of criticism which has accumulated....
Under the generic name `Orbiter', several groups like this are run in connection with the British SF Association (membership enquiries to Jo Raine, 33 Thornville Road, Hartlepool, Cleveland, TS2 8EW). Or you could simply locate a few other aspiring authors yourself.
Of course, if you know other PCW-owning writers, a lot of postage can be saved on the round robin. Several stories and a lot of critical response can be packed into even the 360k of a single, circulating 8256 disk. Use a lightweight (reusable) jiffybag and have the writers add their thoughts in turn to the end of each story document -- more economical with disk space than extra files of comment.
Many of you, I know, are doing it already. Good luck, and watch out for those `traditional narrative elements' ... the delicate Milford euphemism for clichés.
Column 50, 8000 Plus 50, November 1990
HALF CENTURY
Fifty issues of 8000 Plus, and I've appeared in them all, sometimes twice. It's like being the Oldest Inhabitant, with a long white beard constantly getting entangled in the space bar, and several address marks missing from my forebrain. Pausing only to open the congratulatory magnum of champagne which Future Publishing did not send, I poked through my dusty archives of the magazine's prehistory, stretching back through eras of quill pens and clay tablets to the beginning of all things in, actually, 1986.
How embarrassing. Here's the yellowed printout of that first column, when I had no idea how the magazine would look or what my page should be called. Having recently read the unfunniest funny book in literary history, I pinched its title from sheer desperation: Diary of a PCW Nobody.
(Incidentally, copyright law turns a blind eye here: I keep being fooled by new books which recycle other authors' titles, but no one ever complains. Thus Double, Double is a 1950 whodunnit by Ellery Queen, and a 1969 SF novel by John Brunner -- both quoting a 1606 hit by Bill Shakespeare.)
Luckily my first title never reached print: editor Ben Taylor (or maybe Simon Williams, with whom Ben kept swapping in the first year) schizophrenically changed it to Langford's Diary on `Opening Menu' and Langford's Printout within. It stayed as the latter until Rob Ainsley grabbed the editorial hot-seat at issue 20, and presumably thought long and hard about the fact that no printout was involved: I was sending in the stuff on disk.
So, as of issue 21, I've lurked under the scarcely modest or self-effacing column title Langford. This is none of my doing. I am shy and retiring, but as Tolkien wrote, `Do not meddle in the affairs of Editors, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'
Indeed, Ben once became subtly miffed when I included some rude cracks about overpricing of small-press books -- little knowing his ability to vanish into a phone booth and assume his alter-ego as a director of Kerosina Books, whose productions were (and are) very nice but not all that underpriced....
Next in my cobwebbed files comes a stack of letters from Rob Ainsley, some very strange indeed: `A mate of mine has named his house 'Freepost' and swears he knows a Swedish secretary called Per Pro.'
My favourite is Rob's list of editorial woes. `Number one is the old LocoSpell article, cataloguing its bizarre replacements in a wide-eyed first person narrative. Second is probably Case in Point, invariably restricted to LocoScript. Extra naff points are notched up for pet PCW names ('I have a new girlfriend. She's called Joyce. My wife wonders who she can be,' etc.), wally club activities ('My PCW is invaluable in the running of my Civil War Re-Enactment Society. I keep a costume list on file....') and daft mistakes ('I use Logoscript exclusively....' 'I am a regular reader of Amstrad PCW Plus....').'
Along came issue 31 and spanking-new editor Steve Patient, whose total commitment to Amstrad technology was shown by the fact that all his notes to me were scribbled in smeary pencil on both sides of Future Publishing compliments slips. `We are very bored with the bad cartoon of you which fails to decorate your column,' he grumbled in early 1989, and those strange pictures of me up there have become stranger ever since.
Steve liked to cheer the hearts of depressed authors whenever possible: `Dear whingeing sod, We're paid to put gratuitous words on paper, and have a quota to meet. Those inserted into your text were just a few I had left over.... Are we still paying you? We are? Who wants to read about statistics for Ishtar's sake? I wouldn't read it and I have to.'
Or, when I suggested doing an article on assembler and, specifically, an alternative SUBMIT.COM I'd written which could be used on write-protected start of day disks.... `This sounds like a thoroughly useful piece of programming -- pity I can't see any way to use it.'
It was Steve who published my super-pedantic column on How To Punctuate Real Good (page 39), which produced more correspondence than any other. A friendly ex-newspaperman wrote in to explain the original reason why tabloid papers break stories into the shortest possible sentences and paragraphs: in hot-metal typesetting, cutting to fit was most easily done by removing whole paragraphs of type. So they had to be short.
Or to put it another way, that breathless style with a new paragraph for every sentence stems from a now bygone technology, even though all today's major papers are electronically edited on DTP systems which can reformat stories with the utmost ease. I might have guessed.
At around this time I put out some feelers about titivating my 8000 Plus columns for collected book publication....
`They are brilliant, but too ephemeral and magazine-ish,' replied a typical publisher.
`But when I've rewritten them, they will be not only book-ish but even more brilliant,' I modestly pointed out.
`Perhaps, but all the PCW owners will have read them in 8000 Plus and no one else will be interested.'
`Um, I could rewrite them further to make them of wide general interest....'
`In that case the book would not have any identifiable market at all.'
The message is clear. If you like these columns, don't throw away your old copies. Also, you are not an identifiable market. Sorry about that.
Column 51, 8000 Plus 51, December 1990
LEGAL FRICTIONS
Freelancing as a writer can involve you with sleazy operators who sooner or later may display the cloven hoof. Earlier this year I found myself suing publishers in the Clerkenwell County Court -- all by remote control, without having to walk further than a nearby letter-box. You might need to do the same one day, so here's the terrible saga.
Before, I'd always been lucky: my publishers paid what they owed me, eventually. (Well, there was one dear old chap who sold his firm and retired: he reckoned the new owners inherited all debts; the new owners reckoned not; in the end I wrote off the outstanding four quid.) This luck changed with the final instalments of my SF review column for the now defunct games magazine GM, published by Croftward Ltd -- accursed be their name.
Learning that even the editors were no longer getting paid, I began to worry. Cheques continued not to arrive. Panic! This was where the SF grapevine came in handy: I was soon in touch with a writer (Marcus Rowland) who'd already successfully sued this outfit. Picking his brains eased my first foray into the deadly arena of Small Claims litigation....
Most of us dread legal action, feeling with some justification that going to court is equivalent to lighting a huge bonfire of banknotes around which solicitors and barristers will dance a merry jig for exactly as long as your life savings last. But mere writers tend to be chasing relatively small sums, and if the amount is under £500 there's no question of solicitor's fees.
So ... suppose you've been owed money too long by some rotten, lousy publishing firm which out of cowardice we'll call Ripoff Ltd. `Proof of debt' is the basic requirement: a contract or acceptance letter which mentions a fee should do, together with a copy of the book/magazine/newspaper containing your work. If you have only the latter, some research might be needed to establish their standard payment terms. (`Payment on lawsuit only.')
You need to give advance warning in a formal letter. Typically you'll have sent half a dozen and got no reply, but a final one is still necessary -- containing the magic words, `Unless I hear from you within seven days I will issue proceedings in the XXXX County Court....'
My own inclination is to say `seven days' but actually allow more leeway for a dreamy interval of Post Office limbo. However, I might have done better to rush as fast as possible ... as will emerge. Meanwhile, there's the question of which county court to name: for defaulting publishers, it's the one in the district containing their Registered Office. Don't worry if a check at Companies House shows Ripoff Ltd to be registered in the Orkneys: you needn't visit.
Now it's time for some official forms, available free from your own local County (not magistrates') Court. You want a `Request for Issue of Default Summons' and the accompanying Form EX50, actually a lucid little booklet about the whole procedure. This contains an easily lost slip of paper listing court fees -- currently 10% of the debt you're chasing, with a minimum of £7 and a £37 plateau for debts of £300 to £500. Get two copies of the summons form, my pal advises -- you might spoil the first, although I smugly didn't.
While you're there, pick up forms EX50B and C, explaining how to translate a court victory into actual debt recovery, and how much this will cost. Nobody told me about that bit until rather too late. [Some extra plain-English booklets have now been added.]
By the way, the useful EX50 booklet contains examples of how warning letters should be phrased, and specimen Statement of Plaint drafts. Perhaps some public-spirited soul will one day put together a public domain disk of such documents and information: the PCW Small Claims Kit, with all the standard forms of plaint ready to load into LocoScript for adaptation to your own case.
`Plaint' is mere legalese for complaint, and after a heading which names the court, leaves room for a case number and gives both parties' addresses, the writer's Statement would consist roughly of: `we agreed this; they published that; payment not received by whenever; letters requesting payment sent then, then and then; letter warning of court action sent on such-and-such a date; the Plaintiff claims £XXX, being the fee owed.'
There's a box measuring four by five inches for all this on the summons form, which is why it's a good wheeze to attach a separate and perfectly word-processed statement instead. (This is how my pal ruined his first form -- trying to get everything into the box.) In fact you should print and attach two identical ones.
You then post everything to the relevant court -- form, statements, court fee, and the traditional stamped addressed envelope in which you'll be sent an acknowledgment carrying the all-important case number, to be quoted ad nauseam in further letters.
It went like clockwork. The court served a summons on my loathed publishers; two weeks later, as explained in the booklet, I bunged in the `Request for Entry of Judgement by Default' form (also free from the local court), and was awarded the full amount of my debt plus the £37 fee.
All I had to do was collect it.
I puzzled at length over booklet EX50C, `Enforcing Money Judgements in the County Court'. Sending in bailiffs to seize the company's battered PCWs would cost me £38 and might not actually pay off, since the stuff would be sold by public auction for peanuts (how can I get to these sales?). Around then, the wretched company announced its creditors' meeting, and the first thing that emerged from the accounts was that all their worldly goods were forfeit to the bank as security on the third of a million owed them....
Paradoxically, a company that's a million pounds in the hole can laugh at small creditors: the big ones (bank, VAT, Inland Revenue, etc.) are now calling the tune and couldn't care less about ordinary bruised people.
Your hero emerged £37 poorer, but with a wealth of exciting new experience and a stern moral. The moral is: don't start even a small-claims action against vile defaulting publishers, until you're sure there are some assets for you to grab.