John Varley - Blue Champagne

You had a tougher time of it. You were in a store, standing near a window. The huge pressure wave turned the glass into ten thousand slivers of pain, one thousand of which tore the flesh from your body. One sliver went into your left eye. You were hurled to the back of the store, breaking a lot of bones and suffering internal injuries, but you still lived. There was a big piece of plate glass driven through your body. The bloody point emerged from your back. You touched it carefully, trying to pull it out, but it hurt too much.

On the piece of glass was a rectangular decal and the message "Mastercard Gladly Accepted."

The store caught fire around you, and you started to cook slowly. You had time to think "Is this what I pay taxes for?" and then you died.

This story is brought to you courtesy of The Phone Company. Copies of this story can be found near every telephone in Manhattan, and thousands of stories just like it have been compiled for every community in the United States. They make interesting reading. I urge you to read a few pages every night. Don't forget that many wives are listed only under their husband's name. And there are the children to consider: very few have their own phone. Many people—such as single women—pay extra for an unlisted number. And there are the very poor, the transients, the street people, and folks who were unable to pay the last bill. Don't forget any of them as you read the story. Read as much or as little as you can stand, and ask yourself if this is what you want to pay your taxes for. Maybe you'll stop.

Aw, c'mon, I hear you protest. Somebody will survive.

Perhaps. Possibly. Probably.

But that's not the point. We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. Sure, it's horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start all over.

Secretly, we know we'll survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about.

All those after-the-bomb stories are lies. Lies, lies, lies.

This is the only true after-the-bomb story you will ever read.

Everybody dies. Your father and mother are decapitated and crushed by a falling building. Rats eat their severed heads. Your husband is disemboweled. Your wife is blinded, flash-burned, and gropes along a street of cinders until fear-crazed dogs eat her alive. Your brother and sister are incinerated in their homes, their bodies turned into fine powdery ash by firestorms. Your children... ah, I'm sorry, I hate to tell you this, but your children live a long time. Three eternal days. They spend those days puking their guts out, watching the flesh fall from their bodies, smelling the gangrene in their lacerated feet, and asking you why it happened. But you aren't there to tell them. I already told you how you died.

It's what you pay your taxes for.

John Varley

555 Mozart Place Eugene, Oregon 97444

Susan Allison Editor, Berkley Books The Berkley Building

1 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10010

Dear Susan, You and I have talked before about word processors, and how I'm one of the last science fiction writers who doesn't use one. Now I feel it is time to take aggressive action against the blight of computers.

What I want you to do is run the following notice right before the title page of the new book, and in all books after this, and in any re-print editions of previous books written by me. Though this kind of self-promotion is personally repugnant to me, I feel it is time to speak out before it is Too Late.

Also, it might help to sell books to people who feel the same way I do.

You may be wondering just what VarleyYarns® is. Well, I've re-organized, partly for tax purposes, partly for other reasons. I've formed a corporation called VarleyYarns, Inc., to market and promote my books. It's a step that's been long overdue. From now on, you can make out all my royalty checks to VarleyYarns.

Best, John THE UNPROCESSED WORD

seal INTRODUCING VARLEYYARNS®

This symbol is your assurance that the following yarn was composed entirely without the assistance of a word processor.

Each VarleyYarn® is created using only natural ingredients: The purest paper, carbon typewriter ribbons, pencils, ballpoint pens, thought, and creativity. Manuscript corrections are done entirely by hand. Final drafts are lovingly re-typed, word by word, in the finest typefaces available—no dotmatrix printers allowed!

The manuscript of each VarleyYarn® is then carried by the United States Postal Service—First Class!—to the good offices of the Berkley/Putnam Publishing Group in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Not a word is ever phoned in via modem.

Not One Word!

Here the VarleyYarn® is given to skilled artisans, men and woman who learned their craft from their parents, and from their parents before them... many of them using the tools and even the same offices their grandparents used. Crack teams of proofreaders pore over the manuscript, penciling corrections into the wide margins left for that purpose. Messengers hand-carry the VarleyYarn®

from floor to floor of the vast Berkley Building, delivering it to deft Editors, clever Art Directors, and lofty Vice-Presidents.

When all is in readiness, the VarleyYarn® is rushed to the typesetter, who once again re-types the manuscript—word by word!—on the typesetting machine. Then the bulky lead plates are trucked to New Jersey and given to the printer, who uses technologies essentially unchanged from the days of Gutenberg.

And the end result? The book you now hold in your hands, as fine a book as the economic climate will allow.

So look for the sign of the twin typewriter keys—your symbol of quality in:

100% guaranteed non-processed fiction!

John Varley

555 Mozart Place Eugene, Oregon 97444

Dear John, You asked to hear from me as soon as we had some concrete sales figures on the new book. As you know, we ran your ''promotional'' notice as you instructed, just after the title page. The book has been out for a month now, and I'm sorry to say there's no measurable impact. It's selling about as well as the previous collection.

We have received some rather strange mail, though, which I am forwarding to you under a separate cover.

John, I'm not completely sure the public cares whether fiction was written on a typewriter, a word processor, or with a quill pen and ink. I know this is an important issue with you and I was happy to help you try and get your message across, but maybe it's best for now if we just forget it.

Unless I hear back from you soon, I'm going ahead with the twenty-eighth printing of WIZARD without the VarleyYarn seal of approval in front.

Yours, Susan Allison Susan Allison Berkley Dear Susan, Of course they care. You can't tell me people can't tell the difference when it is so obvious to any literate person. They just haven't been given the choice in recent years... and more importantly, they haven't heard the message. I'm afraid putting it in just my books was a mistake, as that is simply preaching to the converted. What I want you to do now is use the advertising budget for the new book and, instead of running the standard promo, use the following material instead. I'd like to see it in all the trade publications and as many national magazines as we can afford. And, far from letting you remove the original message from the new printing of WIZARD, I want to keep it, and run this new one on stiff paper—like you used to use for cigarette ads—somewhere in the middle of the book. Full color won't be necessary; just print the underlined parts in red caps.