Well, that’s Worldcon over for another year. The mimeo demo appeared to go very well. It didn’t draw a huge audience, but there were several people there who had not used mimeo duplicators before and they all seemed very interested. The most significant point that came out of the demo is that mimeo really is a technology. You can’t buy the machines any more, but even if you could you can’t buy stencils, the right sort of paper, the ink or even corflu. In ten years time doing such a demonstration may be impossible because the supplies being saved by fans of mimeo will have run out.
Hopefully I was fairly entertaining during the demo, but once the program slot had ended and we were just into running pages I’m afraid I opted out. I went back to my hotel room and slept for a couple of hours. I still have a headache. Right now I need food. After that I will decide whether I can make it to parties, or whether I should do something with the huge amount of audio and video footage that I have collected during the past week.
You also can’t get stoned while making a mimeo paper anymore. Pity. Somewhere, my second grade self is weeping.
The mimeo demo was a lot of fun. I felt good about being able to donate the actual mimeo machine for the demo and to top it off, I had more conversations about mimeographs at that convention than I had had in many years! At the end of the demo, the Gestetner 230 officially became not-my-property any more and became Colin Hinz’s property. I know he’ll get good use out of it!