Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030288
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Answer: A microchip off the old block called "Just This Once," a bodice-ripping, megabyte-sized potboiler subtitled as a novel written by a computer programmed to think like the world's bestselling author.
A high-tech collaboration of man and machine, the book comes to us as told to Scott French, a 43-year-old fan of the late Susann and self-taught computer programmer.
The prose is generated by an Apple Macintosh computer endowed with artificial intelligence, a program that tries to think like a human. French calls his literary computer Hal, after the paranoid machine in "2001: A Space Odyssey." He is pictured with his arm around Hal on the book's back cover.
"I was really intrigued with taking cutting-edge technology and applying it to something that would be entertaining and fun," French said Friday by telephone from California.
Working with a machine presented special problems.
"There were times in the beginning when I wasn't sure who was in charge - me or the computer. There were times we battled, times we didn't agree. It doesn't get writer's block, but it can bomb or crash," French said.
"On the other hand, it never asked for a raise or posed contractual problems."
French fed the computer's program material from "Valley of the Dolls" and "Once Is Not Enough" - two of the most popular books by Susann, whose cult popularity when she died in 1974 was rivaled by the trashing she took from reviewers.
A computer doesn't actually understand words, but it can approximate a writer's style. In Susann's case, her linear and formulaic writing was perfect for the computer - the use of multiple adjectives, the mix of narrative and dialogue, and the frequency a character might have sex or ingest cocaine.
"The computer program wrote 50 percent of it. Everything from plot, scene, sex acts and when a character might try to steal a lover. I did 25 percent of it, and we did 25 percent together," French said.
The Dead Jackie Susann Quarterly, a New York City publication that serves the author's fans, wrote of the work: "She would be proud. Lots of money, sleaze, Hollywood, disease, death, oral sex, tragedy and the good girl gone bad."
by CNB