Prescription for Chaos Read online

  "Oh, it's not that bad," said Howard. "We'll say it's frank and outspoken, a down-to-earth novel. Could we call it a 'psychological study'?"

  "I doubt it," said Don.

  Fred shook his head reluctantly.

  "All right," said Howard, "then it's a down-to-earth, plain-spoken novel about the stuff life's made of. We'll say it's a first novel, a masterpiece by . . . ah . . . by the new Boccaccio!" He looked up in triumph. "That's exactly the note to strike. Boccaccio's respectable. We'll say this is the work of a modern Boccaccio, that's all."

  Don eyed the machine sourly and said nothing.

  "Well," said Howard, "we'll rush it through the presses and publish it in the fall. Can you have that cover ready, Fred?"

  "You bet," said Fred, grinning and raising his thumb and forefinger.

  "I thought we got this thing to write stories for Varlet," said Don.

  "Precisely," said Howard, "but we have to have enough breadth of vision to fit it into the big picture, too."

  "A stroke of genius, chief," said Fred on cue.

  "Thank you, Fred." Howard looked at Don hopefully.

  "There's bound to be a catch in a thing like this," said Don.

  Howard looked hurt. "Did any of your writers ever produce a book like that . . . or any kind of a book, for that matter . . . right on order in an afternoon?"

  "No," said Don.

  "All right. Now don't worry about Varlet. We'll set it up for Varlet next."

  Fred sneaked a glance at this watch. "That book gave me an appetite," he said. "Why not let Don go out for some food?"

  "I'm not leaving this room," said Don. "If anyone isn't needed here, it's the art editor."

  Howard said mildly, "You can both go. It'll take two of you to bring it back." He pulled over a pad and scribbled his order. "Here, and don't lose the paper."

  After they had left, Howard made careful adjustments on the Writivac. He fed in several exceptionally good issues of Varlet, three of Playboy, two copies of The New Yorker, and an old issue of Esquire. He replenished the paper supply, checked the level of the ink, and set the length for two thousand words. Then there was a commotion at the door, and he looked up to see Don and Fred come in with covered trays.

  "Well, we eat in style," he said. "You were fast enough."

  "We naturally wanted to get back in time to see our next issue," said Don.

  "You set it up yet?" asked Fred.

  "Just finished." Howard pressed the button.

  They had hardly uncovered the tray when the Writivac-112 rang its bell. Fred started eagerly across the room.

  "Wait a minute, will you?" said Don. "Once we start reading that stuff we'll never get to eat."

  Howard started buttering a roll. "Come on back, Fred. It can wait a minute."

  Fred came back reluctantly. The minute they finished the food and piled the trays to one side, Fred was across the room again. The three of them crowded over the printed sheets. On the title page appeared the words:

  THE PARK IN SPRINGTIME

  "Could be anything," said Don.

  "It sounds promising to me," said Howard.

  They leafed through the sheets with intense interest, three pairs of eyes moving as one.

  When they were through, Howard looked up exultantly. "We're in!"

  Fred looked dazed. "Boy," he said at last. "Boy!"

  Don nodded reluctantly. "It's good," he said.

  They clapped each other on the back, Fred and Howard happily, and Don resignedly. Mentally, Don was filling out a correspondence school coupon for a course in welding. Finally they all went home and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The next six months, for Howard, were a triumphal march. Varlet was coming out twice a month, and arrangements were being completed to bring it out as a weekly. The magazine had so much advertising that it was as thick as a phone book, and desperate TV executives were petitioning Congress to pass a law against it. Just in case, Howard was planning a home-type magazine. He and Fred were making final arrangements on the format of The Saturday Reader's Companion.

  "We won't get many ads at first, of course," Howard was saying, "but after the first couple of issues—" He was interrupted by someone rapping the outside of the door with his foot. "There's Don with the food." He started to get up.

  "I'll get it," said Fred, springing to his feet.

  Don came in carrying a stacked tray balanced on a pile of magazines. He was grinning like an imbecile.

  "You out of your head, boy?" said Fred. "Watch that tray!"

  Howard scowled. "What are all those magazines? What are you bringing them in here for?"

  Don shrugged. "I told you a thing like that had to have a catch in it." He plopped down the stack of magazines.

  "Varlet," he said. He tossed a copy onto the desk. "Devilish." He tossed a copy of Devilish onto the desk. "Sly." He tossed a copy of it on the desk. "Villain." Another copy. "Slicker." Another. "Hellion, Rascal, Knave, Cheat." He tossed them on the desk in rapid succession.

  "Open any one," said Don. "Look at the stories. Good stuff."

  Howard blinked.

  Fred closed the door furtively and locked it. "What are you getting at?" he asked. "We've still got the Reader's Companion coming out."

  "I think I get it," said Howard slowly. "What's that last thing you've got in your hands there?"

  Don held it out for him to see. "The Publishers Gazette." He opened it to an ad on an inside page.

  Howard took it and read:

  "Writivac-120, the new all-purpose electronic writer, composes stories typed, double or single-spaced, adjustable margins. Neat copy. Choose one of several styles. Mystery Master, at $3650, is a sound low-priced machine. Can be converted to any other standard type by inserting pop-in coils (available at extra cost). Genre King, at $5750, supplies the best in versatile production-ability with complete control over content. Flexible. Swift. Reliable. Get yours today.

  "Available with pica or elite type. Prices slightly higher west of the Mississippi."

  "Well—" said Howard.

  "I knew there was something fishy," said Don. "What they did was give us a pilot model and watch to see if we complained of quirks while they got their production lines tooled up. Now they're in mass-production. If they get the price down far enough, or the payments spaced out long enough, there'll be one in every living room in the country. We've had it."

  Fred stared at the floor.

  Howard cleared his throat. "How's that welding course coming?" he asked hopefully. "Is there room for two more in the class?"

  A Handheld Primer

  How many of us, the last one or two Christmases, have shared that sinking sensation on being grabbed by a junior member of the family who looks up with a piercing gaze:

  "Can I have a handle for Christmas? Can I? Glenn Thomas has got one."

  A "handle," of course, is a "handheld," known also as a "magic box," "thinkbox," "pocket brain," or "PERM" (Pocketable Electronic Reference Module). This is one of those things that was impossible five years ago, scientifically unthinkable ten years ago, and twenty years ago it was science fiction. The possibility of it has been so well debunked by now that it is a little unnerving to run into it in fourteen different models at one end of the camera counter.

  It was the thought that others must have found themselves equally unprepared that led to this article, which should give, at least, a better picture of the handheld.

  First, the essentials.

  The price ranges from the collapsed levels of remaindered products of the industry's latest bankrupts into the realms of fantasy. In short, you can buy them from $4.95 up. The highest price for a standard job—an all-purpose multiprogrammable financial, real-estate, and stock-and-bond-market model with built-in expandable reference library of data and programs—is $45,000.00. But then there are custom-built models, with no price limit in sight.

  The best bet seems to be to stay under twenty bucks for the first one, particularly if it is a present
for someone not yet nearly old enough to vote, and most particularly if the someone happens to be a small boy. There is something about an expensive handheld that can translate the merely obnoxious to levels truly intolerable.

  Next—where to buy it?

  If you want a reliable one, stay away from discounters, particularly those with a truck parked near the front door, decorated with an overgrown bedsheet reading:

  HANDHELDS!!

  TRUCKLOAD

  SALE!!!!!!

  The truckload lot will almost certainly be from some outfit in bankruptcy, and while the merchandise may be all right when you get it home, what do you do if it isn't?

  If you want a good model, try a camera shop, a book store, or, better yet, a camera shop or book store on a large college campus. There you can expect to find a merchant with a discriminating—even spoiled—clientele, that will not hesitate to speak up or even boycott him if he doesn't back the product.

  This brings us to the heart of the subject.

  Which one to buy?

  It is here that the worst mistakes can be made—mistakes even worse than paying fifty bucks for an OG-53 Experimental that will give wrong answers if you so much as bump it, and if you send it back to be fixed, they will return it unfixed by barge line. To avoid such things, look over what's available before buying.

  Most handhelds fall into some special-purpose category, such as:

  1) The descendents of the calculators of the mid-seventies. These are too well known to need description.

  2) Historical Daters—Relatively simple and inexpensive—and said to have served as a training ground for making the more complex types. You punch the buttons and the screen lights up with the outstanding events of that date. Hit 1-4-9-2, and across the screen from right to left goes: "Christopher Columbus discovered America." A cheap dater may do nothing further. The better models have a wide button lettered "MORE." Tap it repeatedly, and you get: "Columbus sailed the Atlantic seeking a westward route to Asia . . . He had, in his first expedition, three ships: Santa Maria (100 tons), Pinta (50 tons), Niña (40 tons) . . . He was backed by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain . . ." The more expensive models go into incredible detail.

  —If you buy one of these, watch out for the "bear-trapped" jobs, whose manufacturers smilingly put sixty percent of the machine's capacity into a few standard dates—knowing that those few dates are the ones most of us will try before buying.

  There are scientific daters, military daters, religious daters, and so on. The latest is the "PHD" or "Personal History Dater." With this, you feed in the interesting events of the day before you go to sleep. Then later on, you can review your life by date—and so, of course, can anyone else who gets hold of this electronic diary. It's worth the extra money to get the kind that takes a look at your retinal patterns before it will talk.

  3) "Pocket Prof" of "2SR" (Special Subject Reference). In a way, these are the most amazing of the handhelds. Take, for instance, the "GenChem I" put out by the most reliable and expensive U. S. maker. This is said to contain the equivalent of all the facts and data in the usual college course in general chemistry. Its main advantage over a textbook consists in its indexing. Though you can look up references by getting its index on the screen, there is another way. Tap the "CC" (Chemical Compound) button, then hit, say, H-2-O, and facts about water will be flashed on the screen as long as you care to persist, until every reference, direct and indirect, has been sought out and shown. Tap the "El" (Element) button, then tap C-A, and the same thing will be done for calcium. To find references to reactions or other relationships between calcium and water, tap these two sets of buttons, and also tap "Cnc" (for "connection"). References that concern both water and calcium will be flashed on the screen. Few books have an index even remotely as complete, and with the handheld you have only to glance at the screen to see if the reference shown is the one desired. This is an improvement over hunting up, one at a time, a long list of page numbers.

  The GenChem I model, incidentally, uses the broad screen with adjustable flash-time, and a hold button, instead of the reel-type screen, across which letters flow from right to left.

  These handhelds have made a considerable dent in textbook sales, though as hard-core book-lovers like to point out, very few textbooks have ever been known to fade away at two a. m. the night before the exam, just when someone has unauthorizedly borrowed your recharger.

  But, as the handheld enthusiasts ask, how many books can be programmed to give a vocabulary and grammar review in a foreign language, with practically unlimited numbers of questions in randomly varied order, and in whatever form you care to try? There's even one that will speak the words aloud—while research continues on another to independently check the user's pronunciation.

  4) Novelty handhelds—These are the recreation and entertainment models, such as chess and checker players, go, bridge, pinochle, and "pocket casino" models. There are "scenic view" and "guided tour" models. And the "Favorite TV" and "Favorite Movie" series. And, of course, the notorious "Pocket Burlesque Theater."

  The latest versions of all these use the N-V viewer, unlike the bulky early models with large built-in screens. In the N-V system (the letters stand for "Natural-View"), a separate image is flashed into each eye, each view being separately adjusted to fit the user's vision.

  The Scenic View II uses highly sensitive color apparatus, and an enormous repertoire of scenes—making, in effect, a modern compact replacement for the stereoscope.

  The Guided Tour models put related scenes together, along with an earphone for the voice that gives the description. An interesting feature is the "branching" of the tours. Suppose a tour of Paris incidentally shows a famous restaurant. Press the appropriate button, and a new guide appears to express appreciation for your interest, and show you through the restaurant in detail. When now and then he asks, "Do you see?" it isn't a rhetorical question, but the sign of another "branch-point", where if you want you can get still more details.

  Similar to this in principle, is the new "careers" model, meant to show what a person in any given line of work actually does. The first versions, to judge by the groans of the people really doing the kinds of work shown, fall considerably short of realism.

  5) The so-called "trade" handheld—such as the Plumber's Helper, the Auto Mechanic, the Carpenter, the Contractor, and so on. These vary widely.

  There is, for instance, a shiny model we can call the WidgetMasTer. Suppose you want to learn from this model how to bend a widget, and so tap out B-E-N-D. If you hit two of the jampacked keys at once, a red light flashes and an alarm goes off. This is, as the instructions explain, "for your protection."

  After you tap out B-E-N-D, across the screen glides: "REFER TO ITEM REQUIRED."

  Anyone used to book indexes will suppose this means to name the noun first—that is, "Widget, bend." But, if you tap out W-I-D-G-E-T, the screen replies, "STATE REFERENCE DESIRED."

  Apparently, this must be the place to hit B-E-N-D. But then WidgetMasTer unreels: "REFER TO ITEM REQUIRED."

  If you move fast enough, you can hit W-I-D-G-E-T-B- but then the red light flashes and the alarm hammers. There is no such thing as a "widgetb," and WidgetMasTer knows it.

  The only way out of this impasse is to throw WidgetMasTer in the trash can (the preferred solution), or else fight your way through the instruction pamphlet. Eventually you will locate reference to a "GN" key (for "Generic Name") and an "Op" key (for Operation") and an "Sp" key (for "Species") and a "Q" key (for "Query"). It develops that all you have to do is to just press the Q key, and release it, then press the GN key and tap out W-I-D-G-E-T, then press the Sp key and tap our A-L-L, then press the Op key and tap out B-E-N-D, and then press the Q key again, and then, after a brief little two-minute pause while the red light blinks on and off to show how busy WidgetMasTer is, then there slides across the screen: "MAINTAINING PROPER CORRECT ALIGNING GRIP USING SPECIAL TOOL 2WB STEADILY AND FIRMLY APPLY ALTERNATING PRESSURE USING SPECIAL T
OOL A1WB. USE RED HEAT TO AVOID DOWLING CORKING AND CHIEFFERING. DO NOT FORCE THE BEND. CAUTION! NEVER HEAT TREATED WIDGETS!!"

  Since the first part of this answer is gone from the screen well before the last part appears, you may think at first that that sense of confusion results because you missed something the first time around. All you have to do to check the answer is to go through the procedure again, wait till the red light gets through blinking, then watch closely as the answer glides past.

  What, it still isn't clear?

  The trouble seems to be that WidgetMasTer is, as they say in the handheld trade, "question-progenitive"—for every uncertainty you bring to it, it presents you with at least one new uncertainty. The only known way to get a clear answer out of this oracle is to have no uncertainties to begin with. If you already know the subject backwards and forwards, you can nearly always unravel its answers.