Not only would this improve the tone of people's reading, but would deal with obsessive file hoarding and data proliferation!

Tongue firmly planted in cheek. Notice that I didn't say whose tongue or whose cheek... and on that note...

Of course, one person's crap is another person's good crap.

My first thought was that I might pay that much for to have typos, plot holes, and incontinuity mistakes to be magically corrected . . .

. . . but then I realized that this would open the door for other tweaks and sentence restructures and other 'it would have been so much better ifs' that eventually the reader might discover herself in the middle of a story where changes made in the chapters she just read are made for a modified plot that might change itself as she reads it--a sort of acid trip lit, I suppose.

Because some writers are never finished.

As for the possibility of charging to delete crap "randomly and without warning", you should charge twice as much to do so non-randomly at the behest of the consumer. There's a fortune to be made here!

We really like Zappo's in my family (it helps that we are a short distance from a distribution center, so the shoes come in less than 24 hours).

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Perhaps Zappo's will act like yeast in the massive loaf of Amazon and improve them. Sure.

Done!

I've removed your memories of Rod McKeun and overwritten your Rod McKuen memory-space with false recollections of an annoying singer/songwriter.

"Don't panic, I'm a sheet metal worker!"

Ghu preserve them from Pumas, which are way too narrow for my D-width kiddy-length feet. (Nikes fit me just fine, thanks.)

Back on topic, more or less: Yes, I can see authors trying to get editors to change stories as the authors decide they need revising. Plots? Who needs plots? And that character there needs to be more important, but these guys need to disappear .....

I think the company went under and/or got swallowed up during the dot-com un-boom, but ironically I just found an archived copy of their circa-2000 website: http://www.specimenbox.com/di/

Or, ObCopyediting: Dhalgren.

Version one will have a time limit on it.

Version two will be permanent. (and five times more costly.)

You could also sell digital 'insurance'. Accidentally got your digital reader wiped? Need to switch to the newest version of the machine? Need to upgrade your OS? Dropped your reader in the bath and fried it? Mysteriously lost all your files, and no one knows why? No problem, lucky thing you, you've got insurance! Just bop over to the site, log in via secured sign in, and reload all your files. (I'd do monthly charges on this service...)

People just aren't thinking capitalistic enough about digital media. tsk, tsk.

If I had any programing skills at all, I'd be soo rich...

I wouldn't want that in reality, but the fictional possibilities are worth contemplating. Besides unannounced closet visits from Amazappo's, one can imagine steampunkish Victorian-era-wear becoming not just a statement of cool, but de rigeur for open source clothiers that want to avoid draconian penalties for infringing anything designed since 1922...

If all works that didn't meet appropriate standards of literary merit were deleted*, the Hugo lists would of course be of universally acceptable quality, right?

-----
* Or, even better, amended to meet them. Stealthily.

But of course.

Darn, where's the deed for that Florida beach-front property?

I broke into your house and stole it for your own good. It was cluttering up your portfolio.

I deny all knowledge, and you can't prove otherwise.

Best line of the day. It ain't so -- as anyone who has ever been in an anarchist collective will tell you -- but never mind.

Anyone...? P. J? Bruce? Anyone?

Wait - everything? Without an OS, the device would be pretty useless.

I'm pretty sure Sturgeon's Law wildly underestimates the proportion of crap on my computer. For one thing, I'm running Windows...

Yes! I live in Portland, and have friends who work at Nike (in IT) so I'd like to buy the products, but they run ridiculously narrow.

Who were they? I never quite got a straight answer, but I think it had something to do with either the boss at his previous job who was trying to have him killed, or the person who had captured his soul and frozen it in time, so that the past 4 years of his perception were all an illusion, because it was really still 1992.

As an aside, one year when I was in college, I stood in line to register for some classes* so long that I read Star Maker start to finish with 15 minutes to spare. Not the book I'm describing; I picked that one up years later at a bookstore because it was so unique (and reasonably priced).

* The head of the department was playing some sort of game. 1st year students (and up) had been required to pre-register at the end of the previous year for classes in his department. And on the day of registration, every student taking classes in his department had to be interviewed by him. The point apparently was to demonstrate to the administration how important his department was, and gather more resources for his department. Thank God I had an interesting book to read!

And oh, how I have wished Mr. Spock could drop by, deftly place some fingers on my forehead, and then tell me with certainty which items -- books, media, you name it -- I would never, ever use or refer to again. After all that was hauled away, he could go in once more and tell me which items would only cause mild regret if they were to vanish from my life forever.

Spock, baby! If you're out there... call me!

Student co-ops in Berkeley? Even post-Barrington...I lived in Le Chateau, and that was often more anarchist than collective.

As in the The Eyre Affair, perhaps?

Particularly if there was also the ability to un-pay for it. Think of how much tidier and more spacious my bank account would be ...

I too wish I could un-read the both of them. It's my mother who would have had to un-buy them, although I believe they came as a freebie with Book-of-the-Month, which leaves their status beyond undetermined.

Mind you, NESFADA never found anyone who was willing to \take/ such a box....

I've never been able to use the phrase "anarchist collective" with a straight face. It's a phrase on the same order as "Western Civilization" (ask Ghandi). There are a few rare anarchists I've always wanted to collect, of course.

janetl @ 35

Oh, that's why I couldn't keep working at Nike: my feet are too wide.

Oddly enough, a fever-dream that I had once that extended Swordspoint wound up forecasting a couple of incidents in The Privilege of the Sword, years before the latter was published. I suppose I might have extrapolated them out of data in The Fall of the Kings, which HAD been published at the time.

I met Delany at my first Worldcon (NorEasCon 2, IIRC). I was a nerdy gay boy with long blond hair and deep emotional problems. And I'd read Dhalgren repeatedly because I found new things in it every time. I did the timelines on the "Anathemata" and found the timeloops and sequences that couldn't possibly exist, and I was (according to Chip himself years later) the first to notice that the second moon that appears early on is exactly what would appear if a giant mirror were behind our moon (i.e. slightly smaller, in opposite phase, with different markings). Since this was in the section "Prism, Mirror, Lens" I assumed it was deliberate.

At any rate, I was so nervous about meeting The Great Man that I stood there biting my fingernails in front of him.

To this day, he remembers my name when we meet.

Drat you, that was a sonnet itch, and I'm out of practice!

The editor came knocking at my door
One day when I was far too blocked to write.
I almost shut him out, but he was quite
Insistent that he'd fixed such things before.
He strode around the house at breakneck pace
And peered at all the books that lined my walls
Then pulling out his iPhone, made some calls.
"I'll be a while. This one's a classic case."
The next thing I remember, hours on
My shelves were filled with bad fic, slash and slush.
"That's better now, but hey, I have to rush!"
He shook my hand, and (with my books) was gone.
He'd met this poor distracted writer's need:
A household full of books I wouldn't read.

I have often pondered that same thing when trying to declutter and/or am short on cash. "If only all the things that I would never even miss if I didn't know they were gone would disappear, and the money I had paid for them would show up in their place."

And, of course, if wished were horses... (we'd have a lot more shoveling to do.)

I love Swordspoint (my often re-read copy was a break-up gift from an otherwise completely wrong college boyfriend, speaking of a memory I'd like removed, if it weren't for the inherent benefits of horrible mistakes)and had pretty much given up on Ms. Kushner writing another book set in Riverside.

I just ordered a copy---I can't wait to see what Alec and Richard have been up to!

(rubs hands in gleeful anticipation) Thank you!

Serge: Marc's wife was on a couple of panels at Readercon this year; I don't know whether she travels, but if you see "Robin Abrahams" on the list of participants, go. (She's also known as the local ]]]etiquette[[[ columnist.)

* running down and up two flights of stairs to the library. ML: sound mind in sound body!

Brace yourself NOW for the reprise of "I've brought us some fish."

Oh, and did you know that there was a story about Richard's younger days in the March/April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction? It was called "A Wild and a Wicked Youth," and it's very good.

I'll have to ILL it--thanks again!