The Karmora Papers
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE KARMORA PAPERS
he Karmora Papers was begun by half of Kalvos Gesmate in 1975 as a stiff little short story, left
quite visibly in progress in the platen of a manual R.C. Allen typewriter (pica) on the porch of a
Trenton, New Jersey, tenement. Curious new additions by the other half of Kalvos Gesamte
surprisingly appeared that same afternoon, and continued thus for the ensuing summer.
Completed by attrition after many long weeks of anonymous chapter-trading, the novella carried
several alternative titles: Conlog! Conlog! (too glib) was first; then came The Ammoniweed
Eaters (too exotic) and the penultimately brief IN-SCHMO (too appropriate).Two secret copies of the typescript were made and carried to Vermont, where the first coherent version (The Karmora Papers: Confidential) was surreptitiously "word processed" -- still a new and alien word then -- during an otherwise undesirable day job on an IBM 6200, in 1979. The loss of this job made the pile of magnetic cards worthless, but technology carried forth a newly tucked and corrected version on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I in 1981. This was followed by a typeset version (using these same prehistoric computer disks run through a computer-interfaced Addressograph phototypesetter in Lansing, Michigan). Thus, by 1983, there were six bound copies of the work with its final title, The Karmora Papers. Thus it sat (rejected by several commercial publishers; warning: write about what you know.) while the hard-won but unfixed phototypeset faded to illegible cream white, and more unofficial copies circulated to an ever-diminishing cult.
The clamoring Karmora fans triumphed, causing it to be resurrected and revised by the two-in- one Gesamte in 1993 and typeset with a certain finality on a PC-clone (labeled "Model Kalvos-G") in Bookman Antiqua and various fancy typebits. Westleaf Editions (a division of the Laszlo Toth School of Art) agreed to publish the final version that year, and, after one more year’s delay while it was transferred to Pagemaker, there it was, no returns accepted.
Nearly two more years passed before it was tagged for WorldWide Web use, and here it appears at the Malted/Media site. This, one hopes, may be its final resting place.
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