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Hello, I'm new here. I'm a chemical engineer and a career-long HP user. I've also become a freshly-minted published fiction author. An HP calculator figures prominently in my latest work "Gone But Not Forgotten", in the May 2008 issue of Atomjack Science Fiction Magazine. Atomjack is a free, on-line publication, and I thought perhaps the people who frequent this site might be interested in reading the short story. I do hope you enjoy it:
http://atomjackmagazine.com/10/gonebutnotforgotten.html
Ray.
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Maybe other authors should try the "short story fiction" Subject, your old HP....
Cheers, Geoff
PS Ray, you got me thinking about a dark and stormy night over the bogs of Northern Manitoba at 3000 feet, alone except for a certain, deeply tanned HP 25C.......................
;-)
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Quite funny. Thanks for the link.
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Beautiful story.
Again!
-- Antonio
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Hello Ray,
Good story. How many of us have felt an affection of sorts towards our calculators?
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Quote:
How many of us have felt an affection of sorts towards our calculators?
Well, one of my favourite novelists, Nevil Shute (real name Nevil Shute Norway) liked his enough to name his autobiography after it:
Slide Rule - The Autobiography of an Engineer
It was published in 1954. I wonder what he'd have called it if he was writing 30 or even 50 years later?
Best,
--- Les
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]
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Thanks Antonio. Does "Again" mean that you've happened to read other stories of mine?
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Hi Ray,
I enjoyed your writing. there were three incorrect use of English and spelling mistakes:
1. damn drink - should be damned drink
2. LCD shinning dark and sultry - shining?
3. florescent lights - surely fluorescent?
btw, I am not a native speaker of English.
keep the stories rolling, buddy :-)
hpnut in Malaysia
Edited: 2 Aug 2008, 1:20 p.m.
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There is a short reference to a hp-41 in Wm. Buckleys book Atlantic High concerning navigation, also a very good read, Howard
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Amazon has a review of William Buckley's Atlantic High.
http://www.amazon.com/Atlantic-High-Celebration-William-Buckley/dp/0316114405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217720211&sr=1-1
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Volume 5 of The Hewlett Packard Personal Calculator Digest (1979) had a short story by Gordon Dickson called "Thank you Beep...!". It tells the story of an executive on a business trip in 2025. He is assisted by his Hewlett Packard XX2050 "calculator" which looks very much like a HP-41C with a larger tilted screen. The XX2050 is a remarkable machine that has 1 "giga" byte of memory, can communicate through voice commands and can wirelessly communicate with other computers that are connected together on something called "The Net". Pretty futuristic stuff for 1979.
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Hello Les,
I like Nevil Shute too. I knew he was an engineer who worked on weapons development during World War II, but I missed his autobiography. Characters willing to do the right thing no matter what are something rare, more so today. This makes his books enjoyable to read.
I agree with you about the title 30 or perhaps 50 years later.
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Ray:
Quote:
Does "Again" mean that you've happened to read other stories of mine?
Well, not properly. What I meant was: write another!
In any case: where are your other stories?
-- Antonio
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Quote:
Maybe other authors should try the "short story fiction" Subject, your old HP....
Others have. You should read Valentin Albillo's excellent "Time Voyager" story.
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Happy to oblige, if you're interested. Here's a link to my profile at Writertopia, with links to my stories.
http://www.writertopia.com/profiles/RayTabler
Ray.
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Thanks for pointing this one out, Bruce. After I read it, I remembered a story years and years ago (I think it was in Analog Magazine) where a time traveler went back to show Newton a calculator. Unfortunately, the red LED display convinced Newton it was a demonic device, and the time traveler was the devil! Newton threw the guy out and spent the rest of his life writing religious tracts instead of technical papers.
Ray.
