🚀 go-pugleaf

>      A few years ago, a computer somewhere (a college, i believe) was
>      programmed to write a book - a work of fiction, generated by the
>      computer itself -- i believe it was a mystery, titled something
>      very unusual, like:  THE POLICEMAN'S PARTIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
>      MOUSTACHE --

    The book in question is entitled "The Policeman's Beard is Half
    Constructed", and is a collection of sort-of-free-verse poetry
    generated by a Basic program called Racter (short for Raconteur).
    It's great fun to read; I highly recommend tracking it down, or
    ordering it if necessary. A couple of small samples:

              An eagle flies high, it flies higher than a sea gull.
              But the crow wings rapidly from tree to bush to
              hedge. The same can be true of life and of death.
              Sometimes life flies high, sometimes death wings
              rapidly. Sometimes it is spoken that death wings
              from tree to bush to hedge. Sometimes it does not.

                                  ------

              Slide and tumble and fall among
              The dead. Here and there
              Will be found a utensil.

    The publisher is Warner Books. I'm not sure if Racter or William
    Chamberlain (Racter's author) is listed as the book's author.

    A program called Racter is available for the IBM PC and the Mac from
    Mindscape Software. I've played some with the PC version; it seems
    to be a very limited subset of the book-writing program (more along
    the lines of ELIZA). I really can't recommend going out of your way
    to buy it, although I've heard that the voice synthesis the Mac version
    uses makes it a lot more fun.

                                           Jim Hayes