‘Hugh Rowe,’ he wrote. Ah, that struck a chord!

‘Was born,’ he wrote, ‘in Bromley, the son of a marine insurance assessor. He was educated at Bromley Grammar School, where he edited the school magazine and took a leading part in school dramatic activities. After National Service in the Royal Army Pay Corps, he read geography at Selwyn, took a two-one, and joined the William Morris Institute of Automation Research, where he is now head of the Sport Department. He is married.’

He examined his handiwork. It wasn’t bad, if one looked at it in its context, which was accompanying a photograph of himself with a pipe and his profile shown up by skilful back-lighting. He got the photograph out and held it above the paragraph he had typed.

Perhaps if the photograph were slightly broader? Or squarer? Or larger? Or perhaps the paragraph could be improved? The first two words were absolutely right. But after that, was it entirely worthy of the pipe? Did it carry through the rhythm established by the line of the jaw? He wound a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter.

‘Hugh Rowe,’ he wrote, ‘is a Londoner by birth, and comes of a family with the sea in its blood. His promise was already recognised by those in authority at the age of eleven. But he is more than a mere scholar. While still in his teens he was already working as a journalist and an actor, and before he was twenty he had responded to some romantic streak in his character by joining the army. His gallantry as a soldier was unquestioned. Now, as well as being one of the most promising writers of his generation, he is a leading figure in the exciting new field of automation research.’

In a fury of perfectionism he tore the sheet out of the typewriter and started over again.

‘Hugh Rowe,’ he wrote, ‘is one of the new polymaths. Journalist, writer, scientist, thinker, actor, soldier, wit, temporary postman – he has been all and more. . . .’

7

The soporific quiet which filled Goldwasser’s laboratory in the Newspaper Department was disturbed only by the soft rustle of tired newsprint. Assistants bent over the component parts of the Department’s united experiment, the demonstration that in theory a digital computer could be programmed to produce a perfectly satisfactory daily newspaper with all the variety and news sense of the old hand-made article. With silent, infinite tedium, they worked their way through stacks of newspaper cuttings, identifying the pattern of stories, and analysing the stories into standard variables and invariables. At other benches other assistants copied the variables and invariables down on to cards, and sorted the cards into filing cabinets, coded so that in theory a computer could pick its way from card to card in logical order and assemble a news item from them. Once Goldwasser and his colleagues had proved the theory, commercial interests would no doubt swiftly put it into practice. The stylisation of the modern newspaper would be complete. Its last residual connection with the raw, messy, offendable real world would have been broken.