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In his 1951 short story The Fun They Had, Isaac Asimov has a boy who finds something really weird in the attic -- a printed book. In this future, all reading was done on screens.

When e'books* like the Nook and Kindle came out, there were always women sitting outside the building on break on a nice spring day reading their Nooks and Kindles. It looked like the future to me, Asimov's story come true. I prefer printed books, but thought that it was because I'm old, and was thirty before I read anything but TV and movie credits on a screen.

And then I started writing books. My youngest daughter Patty is going to school at Cincinnati University (as a proud dad I have to add that she's Phi Beta Kappa and working full time! I'm not just proud, I'm in awe of her) and when she came home on break and I handed her a hardbound copy of Nobots she said "My dad wrote a book! And it's a REAL book!"

So somehow, even young people like Patty value printed books over e'books.

My audience is mostly nerds, since few non-nerds know of me or my writing, so I figured that the free e'book would far surpass sales of the printed books. Instead, few people are downloading the e'books. More download the PDFs, and more people buy the printed books than PDFs and ebooks combined.

Most people just read the HTML online, maybe that's a testament to my m4d sk1llz at HTML (yeah, right).

Five years ago I was convinced ink was on the way out, but there's a book that was printed long before the first computer was turned on that says "the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated".

* I'll write a short story about the weird spelling shortly.

I don't spend much money, and I seldom give any to online people. But - yeah, I'm aware that Soylent is in need of money. Then I saw it - an UNOBTAINIUM KEY CHAIN!! I'll be the first kid on my block to acquire unobtainium! I'll save my pennies and nickles, and discretely order a few more of these over the next months - and I can then build my UNOBTAINIUM BOMB!

Ooooh, I haven't been this excited since I ordered that little battery powered submarine when I was six or seven years old!

I've uploaded a new book to mcgrewbooks.com. Edgar E. Smith was a well known science fiction writer known as "the father of space opera", and Doctor Smith was a food engineer in his other life. The novel I've uploaded is Triplanetary, first published in serial form in Amazing Stories in 1934.

Some of the dialogue is a bit juvenile, but it would make a great movie.

I've read books accidentally, meaning to read a single chapter and winding up reading it in one setting, but I've never started writing one accidentally.

Until now.

Tired of editing Random Scribblings and Voyage to Earth and Other Stories (Formerly titled "Mars Bars"), I thought I'd look for another science fiction novel in the public domain a little less ancient than The Time Machine to add to my web site.

I didn't find one, so decided to just make a book of public domain short stories by the 20th century greats. I found a LOT, and started assembling a book. Somehow, I wound up adding commentary and thought "Hey! New book!"

Then I discovered that one of the short stories wasn't so short -- in fact, it was a full blown novel. So for the last several days I've been formatting it to put on my web site. E.E. "Doc" Smith's Triplanetary will be posted in a few days.

I'll let you know when it's there. I guess I'm working on three books again. The collection I'm working on is tentatively titled "Yesterday's Tomorrow".

I had to laugh when I ran across this article.

"Cortana's UI now expresses 18 different emotions. Siri remains detached and aloof."

Yes, Microsoft is apparently the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation with its " Genuine People Personalities". So when are they going to make that "Marvin" interface?

He awoke wondering where he was... on a medic. Why was... oh, hell, why was he being held down? And then the big question hit him – Who am I?
        And who, besides the medic itself, which was only a robot, had imprisoned him? And why?
        There was a tube leading into his arm... was he in a hospital? It smelled like a hospital.
        The medic beeped, and said “condition improved, now stable.”
        He must have had some kind of accident, but he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone how he wound up in a hospital.
        “Computer!” he said, hoping the hospital computer could shed some light. It was apparently not paying attention, because it ignored him. He lay there strapped to the robotic table for what seemed like forever when the medic again beeped and spoke. “Condition improved, now fair.”
        “Computer!”
        No answer.
        Damn. “Medic!”
        No answer.
        Another eternity passed, and the medic reported “Condition good, patient released.” The straps came loose and he sat up on the medic, waiting for a nurse or doctor that never showed up. Didn’t someone have paperwork when a patient was released?
        He decided to look around the hospital to find someone and tell them that he shouldn’t have been released, that he had no memory. He used the rest room and went searching for help.
        This, he thought, was the strangest thing... this hospital seemed to have no doctors, no nurses, no administrative staff, nobody. Not even any patients. He walked down hall after hall, and found nothing but locked doors and more hallways.
        He started to panic, and muscle memory reached his hand into his pocket for a phone. There was none there.
        That panicked him. Why didn’t he think of it before? It could have told him at least who he was, if not where he was and why.
        He started running, down first one hallway then another, until he collapsed in exhaustion and anguish. He sat there in the hallway, head in his hands, sobbing softly.
        Quite a while later he finally came to his senses, sort of. He got up and decided to just walk around, looking for... anything, really, but especially people. Where was everyone? It would be nice if he could find a sandwich, too; he was starting to get a little hungry. That added to his already numerous worries.
        He found no exits, no unlocked doors, no people, no sandwiches. It was hard enough to keep his fear below panic levels, but then what was obviously some sort of alarm went off. Was the building on fire? He stopped, with no idea what to do.
        He looked up – weren’t there skylights showing stars earlier? But his memory was impaired, after all, not able to remember his name or anything before waking up on the medic.
        He heard the first sounds that didn’t come from robots that he’d heard since awakening, and it scared him even more – the sound of hail. Perhaps there were skylights, but were now shuttered.
        At this point he was aware that the alarm was almost certainly a tornado warning, and he couldn’t find the stairway! Maybe this building didn’t even have a basement, but who in their right mind would build a structure in a tornado zone without one? But without a stairwell, it might as well not have a basement. He huddled in a doorway waiting for the tornado to destroy him and the building.
        The sounds of hail stopped, the siren stopped, and yes, there were skylights; the shutters opened then, showing stars once again. Odd that the storm had started and ended so fast. The shutters must have closed before the clouds rolled in.
        He started to continue his fruitless search.
        A robot wheeled past, and he had an idea. The robot would certainly lead him to something.
        It did. Down a hallway he’d not yet explored and probably had run past more than once in his earlier panic was a large door that stood wide open, the automatic pocket doors recessed. Inside was a huge room filled with tables and chairs, but still no sign of humanity at all. The robot he’d followed dragged another robot away. Puzzling.
        At least he had somewhere to sit besides the floor. He sat down at one of the many tables to rest, thinking he’d have to figure out how to find his way back before continuing his search.
        He just couldn’t stop wondering what the hell was going on. Was he being studied in some sort of weird experiment? Was he a prisoner by design, or by accident? Was he a criminal? Did he have a family?
        Without even thinking he started praying out loud, “Oh, Lord, please help me...”
        A mechanical voice chimed in. “Can I help you, sir?”
        He looked up at the robot. “Yes,” he said, “how can I get out of this building?”
        “I’m sorry, sir, but that is not in my database. Can I get you something to drink?”
        “Yes, cold water, but first, where am I?”
        “This is the commons area, sir. Would you like a menu?” Without waiting for an answer, the video screen displayed a menu.
        “Yes, I’ll have a cheeseburger, brogs, and a caffeine shike.”
        “Yes, sir,” it said, and started to roll away.
        “Wait!” the man said. “What is this the commons of?”
        “That information is not in my database.”
        “Can you tell me what this building is?”
        “I’m sorry, sir, but that information is not in my database. Is there anything else, sir, or should I fetch your order?”
        “No, go on.” It rolled off. He put his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand.
        The robot came back shortly with his water and shike and rolled away again.
        “What the hell is going on?” he wondered aloud, again.
        The robot came back in with his food and wheeled away. He ate, still not able to figure out how to examine his prison and still find his way back to this “commons”. At least he had food and drink now, which relieved him greatly and made exploration of this building far less, yet still, important.
        Then he thought: A commons. A common area. People should show up here, perhaps he should just wait for someone to show up?
        Several hours later and the skylight still showed stars. Was he in Antarctica? Or was he... Yes, that explained everything. He was on a space ship, but why? Where was it going? Where was the captain?
        Was he the captain? Or... a horrifying thought came to him. Was he a pirate who had killed the captain and thrown the body out the airlock?
        His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of humanity – boots walking down the hallway, and cautious whispering voices.
        He looked around the doorway and saw ten heavily armed, armored, and helmeted men.
        “Oh shit,” he thought. He was captain, but didn’t even recognize his own boat, let alone how to run it, and now there were pirates who would surely murder him and steal the ship and whatever cargo it was carrying. He cowered in a corner, wishing for something to defend himself with.
        They came in, weapons drawn, with the men in the back facing the other way and backing in. The man in front lowered his weapon and raised his face shield. “Jerry? Christ, man, what the hell is going on?”
        “My name is Jerry? Are you sure? I don’t know who I am!”
        “Jesus, Jerry, I’ve known you for years, you’re Jerry Smith. I was scared shitless for you, what the hell happened? Did you get attacked by pirates?”
        “I... I don’t think so. I’d be dead if they had. The first thing I remember is waking up on a medic wondering who I was and where I was and why I was on a medic. I wandered around for hours, I don’t think anybody else is here.”
        “Okay, Joe, check the pilot room. Rob, would you do an engine inspection?”
        “Sure thing, boss.”
        “Jerry, where are your phone and tablet?”
        He shook his head. “No idea, but I was sure wishing I had them.”
        They took Jerry to Earth with them while another man piloted Jerry’s ship there.
        He did eventually get his memory back after a lot of therapy. His phone had been in his captain’s quarters, and he had been doing inspection in machine storage when a can of something that had been improperly stacked by a malfunctioning robot had fallen, hitting him in the head and knocking him cold. A medic had taken him to sick bay, leaving the tablet laying on the floor, effectively locking him out of everything. Clearly, some policies, at least, would have to be changed.
        Jerry never captained another ship. In fact, he spent the rest of his life on Earth and never entered space again.

At an impasse on "Voyage to Earth" I hacked this out today.
        “Mark! I haven't seen you in two years!”
        “Haven't been to Mars. Been carrying ores from the belt to Earth. I heard you got married?”
        “Yeah, Destiny's the best thing that happened to me. Met her on the trip here, she's an astronomer. She's building a new kind of telescope right outside the dome. What are you drinking, Mark?”
        “Beer, I guess. Been a long damned time since I had a beer. Where's all your customers?”
        John was already filling a mug from a tapper. “Have one on me. I'm making my own now even though I sell import. Best beer on Mars, I think. I'm pretty proud of it.
        “Where are my customers? Hell, Mark, it's nine in the morning! The hard core alcoholics don't start showing up until ten.”
        He handed the mug to Mark, who took a sip. “Damn, John, you're right, this is some damned good beer! Hell, your lager is better than Guinness!”
        “Well, thanks. I have pilsner, ale, and wheat beer, too. Took some chemistry and beer making classes, and brewed a lot of real crap before I got any good at it. Since I brew it here it's the cheapest beer on the planet.”
        Mark looked at his mug and laughed. “Can't get much cheaper than free.”
        “That's a two dollar beer you're drinking. Guinness is ten bucks, fifteen for a can.”
        “No bottles?”
        “You won't find much bottled beer on Mars, and if you do it will be expensive as hell. Bottles break too easy; I'm sure glad the beer I brought when we came here was in cans, I'd have had a hell of a mess on my houseboat!”
        “Why?”
        “Pirates were after us, more than even exist now, I hear. The maneuvers I had to do to stay alive would have popped every damned beer in the boat open if it had been in bottles. How is the pirate situation these days?”
        “I haven't had pirates mess with me in a couple of years. They're sure to try to regroup, though, but Ramos' fleet is doing a damned good job.”
        “Yeah, Dewey told me last week that even though the fleet was to cut losses, we're making money on it. Every boat Ramos captures from the pirates is a huge recovery fee from whatever company owns the boat. Ready for another?”
        Mark looked at his mug. “Yeah, fill ‘er up. Damn but you make good beer! Tell me, what's that huge poster on the wall about? A guy with a peg leg and a guitar wearing a funny costume, an eye patch, and a green bird on his shoulder?”
        John grinned. “That's John Lee Hoo... uh, oh, watch your language, Mark, she's mean.
        “Good Morning, Mrs. Ferguson! The usual?” he asked, reaching for a gin bottle.
        “No, my pension check doesn't come in for another week and I'm almost broke; that damned Earthian gin costs way too God damned much and I can't afford another martini. I'll have one of your pilsners instead.”
        John poured a glass and handed it to her and turned back to Mark. “Like I was saying, that's John Lee Hooker. Hear that music? That's him.”
        The jukebox was singing “You's a dirty mother, babe! Ain't no... no ugly good...”
        “He was an old blues singer from the twentieth century, one of the greats of classical guitar.”
        “He had one eye and a peg leg? And what's with the bird?”
        A sloppily dressed man in need of a shave came in, his hands shaking badly. John poured him a beer and grinned. “No, that was put in by an image manipulation program, he had two good eyes and two good legs. He's dressed as an eighteenth century pirate.”
        “But why?”
        “The trip here. I had two hundred drug addicted hookers on board and we were attacked by more pirates than anyone had seen before; the hookers saved us. A thought hit me on the trip that I was Captain Hooker with two hundred peter panhandlers.”
        The old lady laughed. “Nice story, John, but it's bullshit. You aren't old enough to have been a shipping captain.” John and Mark looked at each other and laughed.
        “What's so funny?” the woman asked, with a glare.
        “Private joke,” John said. “Only funny to us. Nothing to do with you.”
        She said “This beer isn't doing it, you have anything stronger that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?”
        “Well, yes, but you might not like it. This is really strong stuff; white lightning. When a batch of beer turns out to not be very good I distill it down to nearly pure ethanol. Want me to make you a martini out of it?”
        “What's it cost?”
        “Buck a shot.”
        “Sure.”
        The shaking man said “I'll have one, too. Make it a double. Not a martini, just two shots.”
        John poured “Mister Shakey” a drink and mixed Mrs. Ferguson's martini, and handed it to her as the man downed his shot. He stopped shaking. Mrs. Ferguson sipped her martini.
        “Whoo-EEE! Whoo! Wow, John, now that's a martini!” She shivered and grinned, and took another sip.
        “While you're pouring, I'm empty,” Mark said. John poured him a beer, and a beer and a shot for the formerly shaky gentleman.
        “Be careful,” John said, “You've been traveling. How long since you had a beer?”
        “I had one on the station on Titan maybe six months ago.”
        John laughed. “Ship time or planet time?”
        “How the hell should I know? Anyway, what difference does it make?”
        “It depends. Can you afford to get drunk today?”
        “No, I plan on passing out by noon. That last trip was hell.”
        “Why? What happened?”
        Mrs. Ferguson and the other man were drinking silently. Mark said “That asshole drunk fuckhead Jones.”
        “Larry Jones?”
        “Of course, Bob Jones and Roy Jones are good guys. Larry's a stupid asshole. Could have got me killed. I think he tried to kill me.”
        Mrs. Ferguson started giggling and asked for another martini. John poured it while Mark continued.
        “He was drunk, of course, and piloting a ship that was on its way in to Titan when I was on my way out. Damned drunken idiot thought I was a pirate; at least, that's what he said, anyway. Bastard launched an atomic at me.”
        “Did it do any damage?”
        “Hell yes, it was only a hundred meters away from my boat when it went off. There was only a little physical damage to the starboard dock, but the EMP killed a generator and six engines. They ought to put spare circuit boards for those things in storage, I came to Mars on one generator.
        “The blast moved the whole damned ship and threw me across the room. Broke my left arm in three places and four ribs on my left side. God damn but it hurt! If I ever see that asshole Jones again I'm going to...”
        Mrs. Ferguson started laughing riotously, slipped off her stool and started to stagger out. “Those two young boys piloting space ships for decades!” she said, and started laughing again as she went through the door.
        The thirsty fellow asked for another beer and said “I don't know, guys, you do look awful young.”
        “I'll explain it in a minute,” John said. “So the asshole broke your arm and ribs?”
        “Yeah, the stupid son of a bitch. He should know there's no pirates there. I think he was lying. I won a shitload of money playing poker with the stupid drunk six months earlier and I think he was trying to kill me. I was hoping he'd get prosecuted, but they just fired the lucky bastard.
        “Now, Mister... what did you say your name was?” he said, turning to the stranger, who grinned.
        “I didn't. Rob Black. You're...?”
        “Mark Wilson. I saw the playbills, are you the guitar player from Earth?”
        “Yeah, that's me. So the bartender here said he'd explain...”
        “John Knolls,” John said. “Look, Mister Black, they knew about relativity hundreds of years ago.”
        “They may have, I don't.”
        “Okay, it's easy. The faster you go, the slower time goes.”
        “Why?”
        “Hell if I know, my wife might. But that's how it works.”
        “It don't make no sense to me.”
        “Well look, suppose you could go at the speed of light...”
        “That's stupid.”
        “Yes, of course you can't but suppose you could. If you could jump up instantly at the speed of light towards a planet around Alpha Proxima...”
        “It has planets?”
        “I don't know, you'd have to ask my wife. Suppose it does and you could jump there at the speed of light. Well, it would seem to you that the trip took less than a blink of an eye, but to people on Mars it would take four years.”
        “You guys are a riot!” He said laughing, left a ten dollar tip on the bar and left, still laughing.
        “Dumb tourist!” Mark said. “Fill me up!”

I just added another title to my web site: H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. I hadn't realized that book was 8000 words short of being a novel.

It only took a day or so to fix up, but then it isn't a fat book like Huckleberry Finn, which has so many illustrations that I'm going to have to upgrade my space on the server (as if this hobby doesn't already cost too much). The Time Machine only has three pictures.

Speaking of Huck, like I mentioned, I hadn't read it in decades. I discovered on reading it that Sergy's kid did NOT, in fact, coin the word "Google". The word "Googling" is in chapter 29: "The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world."

Do you think that they'd have named it something else if they knew that "googling" had to do with lack of speed? I found it rather amusing.

You've probably noticed that the posted books I didn't wrire are referenced in the ones I did. I wish I could post Asimov's The End of Eternity.

I should get back to Mars Bars and Random Scribblings...

About six months or so ago I decided to take a break from writing and do some reading, so I pulled an Asimov collection from the shelf. After half a dozen or so stories, I thought I'd read something that wasn't science fiction. Huckleberry Finn was on my mind, and since my copy was somehow lost I decided to just read it on the web; I remembered it being a really good book, though I hadn't read it in decades.

All the online versions sucked; archive.org, gutenberg.org, the .EDUs, it didn't matter. All had extraneous bullshit and looked thrown together carelessly.

So I thought I'd assemble one that didn't suck; one with borders, a book font, proper justification, all the illustrations by the original illustrator, and put there with thought rather than

.

I see why the rest looked hastily thrown together; it was a hell of a lot of work. I've been at it full time for a couple of weeks, and although I've posted it at my web site there are still a few bugs.

If you decide to read some Twain and see some bugs, please let me know.

The book isn't really about Huck. It was about Jim. It was an abolitionist book about the horrors of slavery, written before the Civil War.

Folks were sure different back then.

For the last several years I've noticed Google's search results getting worse and worse as time went by. Ten years ago, typing the title of a work returned that work usually in the first spot. They now seem to completely ignore the "title" meta tags.

They've gradually reduced the number of things you could do to get to the document you're searching for. It used to be that if you searched for "no dog is a cat", all the search results would have that phrase in it, with documents having that as a title listed first. Now, searching for that phrase returns any page with any of those words. What damned good is that, if that exact phrase is what you're looking for? Apparently, Google now ignores quote marks.

I discovered this morning that that's not all it ignores now. Google has deteriorated to the point that the old Infoseek that Google took the search crown from was better.

It ignores not only quotes, but all punctuation and spaces. I searched for "Mars, Ho!" (including the quotes) and the first ten pages had results about people and things named "marsho". WHAT THE GOD DAMNED FUCK??? Why in the hell do the idiots think I put that comma, space, and exclamation point in for?

NASA has a "Mars, Ho!" page. Guess what? Google doesn't return it. At all. Google gives me millions of pages, none of which match my search criteria. I can almost see it not finding my insignifigant site, but a NASA page doesn't show up?

That's just pathetic.

What's even more pathetic is that its quality has deteriorated so much that Bing and Yahoo are now better at returning what you're actually searching for. Both NASA's "Mars, Ho!" page and mine are on the first page of both Bing and Yahoo's sites.

It was wrong of Firefox to just change peoples' default search, but I now see why they did it. They figured out before I did that Google jumped the shark quite a while ago and now is next to worthless.