John Varley - Blue Champagne

John seal WHY VARLEYYARNS®?

Perhaps you asked yourself: "Why should I buy and read Berkley's VarleyYarns® when cheaper, more plentiful 'processed' fiction puts me to sleep just as quickly?"

Here are some things we at VarleyYarns® think you should know: Processed fiction can contain harmful additives.

When fiction is produced on a Word Processor each keystroke is first converted to a series of "on" and "off" signals in the microprocessor unit. Some of these signals go to the video screen and are displayed. The rest are "tagged" by various electronic additives and stored in the "memory" for later retrieval. Inevitably, these tags cling to the words themselves, and no amount of further processing can wash them away. Even worse, while in the memory these words are subject to outside interference such as power surges, changes in the Earth's magnetic field, sun spots, lightning discharges, and the passage of Halley's Comet—due back in 1986... and every 76 years thereafter!

VarleyYarns® are guaranteed to contain no sorting codes, assemblers, inelegant "languages" like FORTRAN or C.O.B.O.L., and to be free of the fuzzy edges caused by too much handling (more commonly known as "hacker's marks").

Floppy disks lack sincerity.

Think about it. When the "word processor" turns off his or her machine... the words all go away!

The screen goes blank. The words no longer exist except as encoded messages on a piece of plastic known as a floppy disk. These words cannot be retrieved except by whirling the disk at great speed—a process that can itself damage the words. Words on a floppy disk are un-loved words, living a forlorn half-life in the memory until they are suddenly spewed forth at great and debilitating speed by a dot-matrix printer that actually burns them into the page!

VarleyYarn® words go directly from the writer's mind onto the printed page, with no harmful intermediate steps. At night, when the typewriter is turned off, they repose peacefully in cozy stacks of paper on the writer's desk, secure in the knowledge they are cherished as words.

Microprocessors are Un-American.

That's right, we said Un-American. At the heart of every word processor is something called a microchip. Due to cheap labor costs, these chips are made in places like Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Now, we at VarleyYarns® have nothing against the Japanese (though Pearl Harbor was a pretty cowardly attack, don't you think?), but ask yourself this: Do you want to entrust your precious fiction to a machine that doesn't even speak English?

So ask your grocer, druggist, airport manager, and bookseller to stock up on Berkley's VarleyYarns® today. And next time someone offers to let you read processed fiction, you can say:

"No thanks! I'd rather read a VarleyYarn®!"

John Varley

555 Mozart Place Eugene, Oregon 97444

Dear John, As you must have seen by now, I did as you asked.

But let me tell you, it was a struggle. I fought pretty hard for that ad budget, such as it was, and it was quite a trick to turn around and tell everyone you now want this other material to run in place of the ads we'd prepared.

A word to the wise, my friend. You're not the only author on the Berkley list. I called in a lot of favors on this one. And I'm sorry to tell you it doesn't seem to have worked. All of them—The Times, Rolling Stone, Publishers Weekly, Variety, USA Today, Locus—report negative responses to the ad as run. Maybe this will convince you that people really aren't concerned—as I know you are—about the spread of word processors.

One more thing you might not have considered. All the other Berkley authors use word processors.

More than a few of them have called or written about your ad. So far the tone has been more puzzled than anything else, but I'm afraid that if we went on with this it could only get worse. See, they're beginning to think you're saying something negative about their fiction.

For this reason, if for no other, I'm pulling your ad from all the printed media, and canceling the upcoming radio and television campaign. The fortythird printing of TITAN goes to the presses next week, and it will do so without either the VarleyYarns ''symbol of quality'' or the two-color slick paper insert.

Yours truly, Susan Dear Susan, You can't do this to me! You're simply not giving this a chance to work. Naturally there's going to be some initial resistance. It's a new idea to most people out there that word additives can be harmful to one's fiction. Remember how people fought the idea of ecology in the late 60's? Remember how the AEC used to tell us that radiation was good for you? This is just like that. The word has to get out now, before it's too late.

So here's what I want you to do. Forget all the book advertising. I want to go right on to direct mail.

See if you can obtain the lists of everyone who ever voted for Eugene McCarthy, and send them all a copy of the enclosed expose. It's time their eyes were really opened.

I have gone to a great deal of trouble obtaining these testimonials. I expect you to do your part. And, oh, sure, I know the lawyers on your end are going to give you a hard time about some of this, but you'll notice I've concealed the names of the people involved.

Here's to an unprocessed future...

John The Shame of MacWrite Brought To You By seal VarleyYarns®

Home Of The Unprocessed Word Almost without our realizing it, a generation has grown up in America that has never read an unprocessed word, never heard an unprocessed line of dialogue. This is tragic enough... but have you ever considered the effect of the Word Processor upon today's writers? Many of them have never seen a typewriter. Their familiarity with pen and ink extends only to the writing of checks to pay for a new addition to their computer systems.

And now, slowly, insidiously, hidden from public view, the results of their new toys are beginning to be felt.

We at VarleyYarns® feel it is time for someone to speak out, to rip away the veil of secrecy that has, until now, prevented these writers from coming forward to speak of their shame, their anguish, their heartbreak. You probably don't know any writers personally. Most people don't. Here are some facts you should know: Fact #1: Writers can't handle money, and are suckers for shiny new toys.

Writers are a simple folk, by and large. Awkward in social situations, easily deceived, childishly eager to please, the typical writer never had the advantages of a normal childhood. He was the dreamy one, the friendless one, object of scorn and ridicule to his classmates. Living in his own fantasy world, writing his "fiction," he is ill-equipped for the pitfalls of money or technology.

Fact #2: Writers come in two types—compulsives, and procrastinators.

The Type A writer will labor endlessly without food, water, or sleep. His output of fiction is prodigious. Many claim they would write fiction even if they were not being paid for it—a sure danger signal.

Type B writers live to sharpen pencils, straighten their desks, create elaborate filing systems, and answer the telephone and the doorbell. A productive day for the Type B writer consists of half a paragraph—which may end up in the wastepaper basket at the end of the day. This writer will work only under deadline pressure. Any excuse to leave the typewriter is welcomed.

Conclusion: The Word Processor is precisely the wrong tool to put into a writer's hands!!

If you don't believe it, listen to these unsolicited testimonials from some of the most pitiful cases of computaholism:

"SK," Jerusalem's Lot, Maine I was one of the first writers to get a word processor. My God, if only I had known... if only... I was always prolific. I write every day but Guy Fawkes Day, Bastille Day, and the anniversary of the St.