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finally have reference to it in this novel, and do give a credit, but at the risk of alienating hundreds of
readers who suggested it before and haven't been credited.
This time I used reader notions dating from 1993-96, trying to give preference to older ones, and
managed to catch up on most of them through FeBlueberry 1995, and scattered ones thereafter. So there
are over 100 waiting for the next novel. I'm still making notes of good ones, but this seems to be a losing
race; each novel I am further behind. So for those of you who hoped to see your notions here, and didn't:
maybe next time. I'm really in the business of writing novels, not publishing lists of names. It's not that
your notions are bad, just that there are too many of them.
Meanwhile, my dull mundane life continued as I wrote this novel. I am not entirely sure why readers
want to know about my personal existence, but they complain when I don't mention it, and on occasion
I'll get a letter inquiring whether I have died. No, not that I know of. I gave a talk for the "Last Lecture"
series at the University of South Florida, the theme of this series being that if you knew it was to be your
last lecture ever, what would you say? I thought about it, and concluded that I would want to let others
know what I had learned, in the course of my researches for my serious writing-the GEODYSSEY
historical fiction series-about the nature of mankind. So I told of the evolution of our species from
Australopithecus to the present, of the complications entailed by learning to walk two-footed, of the
"triple ploy" women use to capture and hold men, and the true nature of dreams, which are actually the
brain's "downtime" processing of the experiences of the day for cross-referencing and long-term
memory. The following month I talked at the American Humanist convention in Florida, telling a love
story adapted from the third GEODYSSEY novel, relating to the global crisis we face and the manner in
which two communities, survivalist and pacifist, manage to work together to survive it, despite their
opposite philosophies. No, not many laughs in these talks; both were deadly serious. For laughs, come to
Xanth.
This was the first novel I wrote completely on Windows 95 and Word 7 on my new Pentium system.
These are powerful programs, and slowly I am coming to like them, and especially the ergonomic
keyboard, which looks like a Salvador Dali painting. The programs were the least user-friendly to learn,
compared to CP/M and DOS and many applications thereon, but the most powerful. I remain irritated
that I can no longer use the number-pad "Enter" key to do my Saves, and that the keyboard cursor,
renamed the vaguely obscene "Insertion Point," is almost invisible and can't be made into a visible
square as in DOS, and that there is no ongoing indication which files are Saved or Unsaved (you have to
do a special check on each, which Unsaves it; only an idiot would set it up that way, but other features
are beautiful, such as the Auto-Correct that fixes things as I type; TrueType that enables me to ensure
that it will print exactly as it looks on-screen, with a wide variety of fonts; and the range of views and
colors and sizes I can have on-screen for convenience. So now I have green Courier New 12 print on a
brown background for my novel text, and yellow Times New Roman 10 print for related notes, so I
know instantly what text I'm in. Revisions stand out in cyan, and deletions in purple. I made a 42
keystroke macro that splits the screen, puts postage stamp sized images of my pages in the upper pane,
and 140% size type in the lower pane, so I can see the whole page format at the same time as reading the
comfortable magnified print, with alternate views on tap when I want them. Ain't magic wonderful!
Some years back I had a problem with my tongue: it got sore when it touched one place in my mouth. A
host of specialists could not fix the problem. I remember one: he listened carefully to my description,
then checked it by pulling my tongue about a foot from my face and poking his finger two inches
through the bottom of my mouth. Okay, so this is a subjective impression; still, it gives me a notion how
a horse feels when the vet grabs its tongue. I think my dentist thought the problem was elsewhere in my
head, but he made me a stint to protect my tongue from that place, and it works. I still use it. Once I was
at a party, and it came out when I was eating, so I put it on the napkin; then my wife threw the napkin
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away. No, it was an accident; she went and fished through the garbage until she recovered it. And, yes, I
did wash it before I put it back in my mouth. I do keep my mouth clean, whatever critics may think; I
brush my teeth carefully three times a day, use a special little brush shaped like a Christmas tree once a
day, and toss once a week. I also watch my diet, staying generally clear of sweets and alcohol, and of
course I am a vegetarian. Yet still my gums recede, making my teeth sensitive and at risk for decay.
During this novel it got worse; my gum was festering in one place and the tooth and bone structure were
deteriorating. What was the matter? So my dentist sent me to a periodontist, who discovered that it was
a specific problem in an otherwise healthy mouth: one root of a root canal job had gotten unsealed, and
infection had weaseled in. So he in turn is sending me on to an endodontist, to see if it can be repaired. It
seems it's easier to do a root canal than to repair a bad one. Thus my continuing adventures in dentistry,
strictly of the mundane kind.
I also exercise. For over a decade I ran three miles cross country, three times a week, but finally the
sand-spurs (Florida's version of curse-burrs), sugar sand, thorny blackberry bushes, biting flies, and
vicissitudes of weather got to me, and I moved it indoors. I used a stationary cycle with connected
handles to exercise the arms as well as the legs, and I read publications like Liberal Opinion Week and
New Scientist and several health newsletters while doing so, so it didn't get dull. But those machines
wear out or break down, and it happened again during this novel. This time we bought a self-powered
treadmill with arm handles. But how could I read? So we bought a music stand to hold the magazines,
but it was too short. So we set it up on a stool with a square of plywood on top, but then it was too far
away. So my wife brought out her needlework stretcher frame stand, which is a weird multi-jointed
wooden device, and clamped it below the top section of the music stand. It was unbalanced, so we put a
small roll of fence wire on its feet to stabilize it. And it worked!
Now I can read again while exercising. All it takes is a treadmill, stool, plywood, fence wire,
needlework apparatus, music stand, and a magazine.
In other respects, life had some unusual aspects. The hottest year on record, 1995, was followed by our
coldest winter in some time. As I finished the novel, the Comet Hyakutake passed; my wife and I went
out at odd hours of the night to try to outsmart the ornery trees and clouds and moon so as to catch a
glimpse of it. I mean, if the brightest comet in five centuries comes to celebrate the completion of my
novel, the least I can do is look at it. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]