(Immediately) Abandoned Idea Clearinghouse
A little while ago there was a thread on RPG.NET in which a purchaser of the print version of Robin’s Laws Of Good Gamemastering complained that it had too many typos in it. Although I cringe at errors and typos as much as the next writer, it seemed that the actual list was mercifully short, compared to horrors promised in the thread title. The poster had developed the enticingly fanciful theory that I had dashed the book off in longhand, possibly due to time pressures, and that Steve Jackson Games staffers had OCRed it into print.
Anyhow, the really cool thing about the thread is that the poster is reporting at least some typos that no one else has seen in their print copies of the book. It put me in mind of a short story idea, in which a writer discovers, to his dismay, that certain copies of his published works are changing on the shelf. In the course of the story, he finds multiple copies, each changing in their own way-perhaps toward an ultimately sinister purpose.
I’m not going to write this story. Depending on what mode one chose, it would intrude too closely into the territories of either Stephen King or Jorge Luis Borges. But I thought I’d share the concept with all of you.
You know, so it can mutate in separate directions in all of your various minds...