by M. A. Foster
He looked up and at her for a long time, still surprised that for all her plain looks and wandering origins, she was still perceptive enough to awaken him to his deepest thoughts. He said, “Yes, sometimes. You can’t forget, and you’d love to tamper. But you dare not. Just once, and it would start all over again. No. There has been enough suffering.’’
“You told me how you could find the one person, who, obscure and unknown, was the support of the world.”
“Yes. I could do that. I have not done it for years. I have not wanted to know.”
“Would it be safe to look now?”
Phaedrus sat back and looked at her attentively. “I suppose I could, if I can remember all the routines, the formulae, the operations. Remember it used a system of logic that doesn’t agree with the usual one people steer their lives by.”
“Do it. See if you can get an answer now.”
There was an impish smile on her face, as if she knew something. Phaedrus got up from his chair and went looking about for a piece of paper, and a pen. After a time, he found one, and began, slowly and uncertainly at first, but with growing assurance, as the routines came back to him from their long disuse. He began building the logical framework, and then the inputs, using the symbolism they had forcefed him in another age, so it seemed, and then it began working easily, and he asked for more paper, feeling the flow smoothing, and at last he was forming the symbols in the system for the conclusion of the operation, and it was clear what the Answer was, as he filled in the last line that completed the whole. The pivotal person of this new world was himself. He looked up at Meliosme. He said, unsteadily, “It’s me.”
Meliosme, smiling still, nodded, and gave him a quick hug, and said, “Knew it.”
copyright
Copyright ©, 1981, by M. A. Foster
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
COVER ART BY MICHAEL WHELAN.
First Printing, December 1981
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF.
MARCA REGISTRADA.
HECHO EN U.S.A.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
ISBN: 0-8997-669-1
Anticopyright
Title: The Morphodite
Author: M. A. Foster
Genre: science fiction
Source: DAW Books paperback edition, published December, 1981
Process: Scanned, OCR'd and proofed.
Date of e-text: February 13, 2014
Prepared by: Antwerp
Comments:
As far as I know, this is the only existing e-text of this book.
Thoughts on Scanning:
Good books often get overlooked. Maybe they weren't Fan favorites (I'm not a “Capital-F" science fiction Fan. I just read a lot of the stuff). Maybe they were poorly marketed, "one-hit-wonders", or out of character for an author. Many exist in the grey areas between science fiction and fantasy, or between sf and general fiction. And, of course, a lot have just been forgotten. Publishing companies aren't going to invest the time and money to digitize a book unless they have a guaranteed return-on-investment. Authors (or their heirs) often don't have the resources or the interest. Even when they do, they face the problem of getting the publisher to release the title. In the move to digitize books, these lonely gems are very likely to be lost forever to the world.
So, that's my standard for selecting books for scanning - 1) A good read, that 2) is likely to be overlooked.
Notes about scanning:
I'm hardly an expert, but for what it's worth here's what I've learned so far:
1. The hardest part of scanning a book is steeling yourself to unbind your book. It may help to remember that standard mass-market paperbacks were never made to last. If your bookshelf is anything like mine, paperbacks more than ten years old are already showing signs of age. At fifteen to twenty years, the pages are yellowing and the binding is starting to crack and loosen. They won't last much longer as a readable book, and may no longer be available in any format.
Sometimes you really do have to destroy the village in order to save it.
2. The trick to unbinding a standard paperback is heat (even if you're careful, cutting can damage the text, especially with an old cheap paperback). A heavy cast-iron skillet works well. Pre-heat the skillet to "medium". Place just the binding edge on the surface of the skillet for a few seconds. The pages should start to loosen enough to gently pull free. Be careful not to over-heat - you only want to soften the binding glue, not liquefy or vapourise it. I don't know the flash-point of binding glue or what it's made of, but it's probably not something you want to breathe. Carefully separate out the individual pages, re-heating the binding edge as needed. Don't neatly re-stack the pages, leave them in a loose pile until they've fully cooled. Watch out for glue strings and blobs.
Do I have to tell you that you really, really should never, ever use this skillet for cooking anymore?
3. Make sure your scanner will do at least 600dpi. I know all the OCR guides say 300 dpi, but the text in paperbacks is pretty small and you have contend with cheap fibrous paper and background discolouration, not to mention tea stains and such. 600 dpi gives your software something to work with. I find that scanning in Photo mode, greyscale, dark (underexposed), at high contrast seems to get the best results. Play around with your scanner's settings until you get something that works for your OCR program.
4. "Obtain" a real OCR program, not Acrobat's built-in ocr or some freeware app. No offence intended - I use lots of freeware and shareware myself - but OCR is something that requires a high-end program to get the job done right.
5. Proofing is a tedious pain in the ass, but it's really the most important part. To avoid burning out, I suggest limiting yourself to scanning-and-proofing 50 or so pages a day. It'll take around a week per book, but it's worth taking the time to do the job right. Remember, yours may well be the only e-copy of your favourite book that will ever be made. Proof responsibly.
6. When formatting your e-book, I find (have found, the hard way) that simpler is better. If you try too hard to make it pretty, it often gets confusing and garbled on an actual e-reader. Remember that not everyone has the same brand of ebook reader, so your ebook is probably going to go through at least one format conversion. Unnecessary bells-and-whistles don't translate well between ebook formats. Just make it easily readable and avoid anything fancy unless the text absolutely requires it.
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Anticopyright 2014. All rights reversed.