[ExI] forward from an offlist

Tue Sep 23 15:58:12 UTC 2025

BillK posted this offlist, but he didn't put anything personal in it, so I am forwarding to the Exi list, guessing he won't mind:

-----Original Message-----
From: BillK <pharos at gmail.com> 
...
>
>>... If I manage to do so, I want to ask him a question about that last 
> story in his anthology Mathenauts.  I figured out it was a parody of 
> graduate school, and that the mad mathematician making money off of 
> the students' research (his volunteer slaves (pretty much describes 
> doctoral candidates doing their research projects, ja?)
>
> spike
> -------------------------------

Hi Spike

>...I asked my friendly AI about that story and it seems your memory has made an error.
The last story in the anthology wasn't written by Rudy.
See contents list here:

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?21699

BillK

...

Oh, OK I had the order wrong, not the last story, cool thx.

BillK, I already knew (although I might have failed to explain) that the mad mathematician story was written by the only name I didn't recognize on the list of authors, Norman Kagan.  Rudy was the editor who selected and marketed the stories.  He didn't write any of them, which vaguely reinforced the notion that he was Kagan's mad mathematician.  Rudy was a professor at San Jose State U, had grad students and post-grad researchers chasing their PhDs working for him.  They would produce some cool software widget, not marketable as a standalone, so they would perhaps give it to their beloved professor who had the smarts to look at the code and figure out the tricks, collect a bunch of them (the coolest ones and the ones which worked best on our cobby little M68000s and Z80s and i386 computers we had in those days, with approximately five bytes of memory and a clock speed of about one hert.  They weren't even hertz back then, because the early processor clocks where attached by a rod or string to the pendulum on a mechanical clock, cycle speed one hert.  

OK so that is a bit of an exaggeration, but running a good sturdy Lucas Lehmer back in the 1970s required the patience of the saints.

Get a few dozen of those software widgets written by grad students, sell it as auto-rotating trippy screen savers.  Fifty bucks at Fry's Electronics.  OK, stamp out a CD, toss it in a box, shrink wrap, five dollars in manufacturing cost, 50 bucks at Frys, they take their cut, he coulda been making 40 bucks a unit profit.

If you look at that list of giants who contributed to Mathenauts, you can imagine them selling (or even giving) Rudy the IP copyright for an oddball story they wrote, an exception to their usual SciFi which would fit nowhere in their own anthologies, Rudy collects it under one title, writes nothing but an intro himself, lets his (possible) buddy Kagan who is not a recognized author (by me anyway (perhaps one of Rudy's former grad students?)) go into the same collection with Asimov, Clarke, Benford, Bear, Niven, the rest, all the biggity biggies before whom I would fall prostrate, begging for forgiveness and mercy, for I suck, etc.  I was always bad to do that sorta thing in the presence of people who were my heroes.  I was lucky enough to meet several of them, and luckier still to meet Rudy before I knew anything about him, allowing me to act like an actual normal human in his presence rather than a swooning male fangirl who happened to get lost, wander backstage and meet all four of the Beatles coming down the narrow hallway.

Rudy took us to his library, showed us a colorful screen saver widget he had developed using cellular automaton tech.  Oh that was trippy.  I channeled my grandfather (I was good at that (it could be funny if I did it right (he was a rugged old school stalwart.))) Me: Rudy, it's a good thing you didn't invent that back when there were drugs.

I was reading his face: amused but puzzled.  I had already picked up on the vibe taht both he and Damien were from the sixties.  I wasn't really.  I lived in that decade but was not of that decade.

Me:  Ja!  I read about it in the history books.  Back in the olden days, there were these people with colorful clothing and big beards and long hair and such as that.  They called them "hippies."

I made the air quotes, for humorous effect.  I already knew about Damien's huge beard and hair, so I was coaxing them into my little gag.

Me: These "rock and roll" stars ate various chemicals that made them see stuff like... THAT!  (pointing to the screen.)  But "rock and roll" stars ate them too.

Again with the air quotes.

I was in elementary school when all this happened, so my knowledge of it is from reading about it in my American History text book.  Fortunately both these guys had a sensa huma.  I read the room, saw my geezer impersonation was working, and continued:

These "rock and roll" stars began to perish, such as the guitar legend Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Cass Elliot, oh what a loss she was.  Then, somehow drugs went away, or if they are still around, you don't ever hear much about it anymore, and I don't know whatever happened to "rock and roll" but what they play on the radio now sounds like a men who sing like women, repetitive boring dance music, I think the call it disco, kinda like modern elevator music or something.

They were amused at that comment as well.  I am stand-up ad libbing all this crap in real time, and these two hippies about 15 yrs my senior, are loving it, seeing what all that looked like from the point of view of the next generation.

So I went on:  Now Rudy, what if... we were back in the olden days when "rock and roll" stars were still eating drugs, and you had invented... THAT!  They would eat their... whatever it was they ate, or smoked or poked into their veins, however they did that back in those days... then  get "stoned" (air quotes) and do nothing but sit watching... THAT!  We would have no rock and roll!  How tragic that would be!  By delaying your software by about a decade, you are the man who saved rock and roll!

And you know sir... sitting and watching THAT... well it just somehow seems... safer... than whatever it is that slew those "rock and roll" stars.

Ah it was a good time back there in Rudy's library.  Their laughter sounded genuine, and I was able to deliver the ad-lib with a good straight-man face, which is itself a self-parody.  If a skilled straight man can parody himself, one is never entirely sure he is in on his own joke.  If done correctly, the audience must wonder if the naïve young fool really doesn't know what he doesn't know.  Well, it worked that time.

>...The academic parody story you described is "Four Brands of Impossible"
by Norman Kagan. (Rather long story - it is a short novel really).
Plot summary:
The story "Four Brands of Impossible" by Norman Kagan is a satire centered around graduate school life and academic research culture.
The plot is narrated by a graduate student who parodies himself, his peers, and the entire academic system. ... BillK
-----------------

Thanks for that BillK.  That part I figured out (a coupla months after the fact (in a public space (but oh it was well worth the wait.)))  What I still don't know is if Rudy Rucker himself is the mad mathematician who inspired Kagan, but if he is, I completely get the full-circle joke: Rudy's tacit but sly non-revealing of himself as editor of the book title I mentioned as a favored genre, and possibly setting me up for yet another time-joke, this one coming to me nearly three decades later.

I am a lucky man, growing up in lucky times.  Keith, you and I are two lucky guys sir.  We are all lucky to be here and now, ja?  What a time to be living.

spike