ETERLAN SEPTEBMER

[cpressey]

ETERLAN SEPTEBMER

Code

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Novel

ETERLAN SEPTEBMER.md, exactly 50,000 words

Notes

In Usenet jargon, Eternal September refers to September 1993, the month that AOL started heavily promoting Usenet access to the general public. The Internet would never be the same again.

September 1993 is also when the Befunge programming language was invented.

(These two events are generally considered to be coincidental.)

Anyway, 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of both of these events, and this novel generator, written in Befunge-93, celebrates this 25th anniversary -- mainly the latter event rather than the former, though, you understand.

(Okay, two months have now passed since September, it's true, but it also remains true that 2018 - 1993 = 25, and there is a certain time of year when it is best to write these novel generator things. So, here it is.)

The novel itself was generated with bef, the Befunge-93 reference interpreter (using the -q option to suppress extraneous output).

Being a two-dimensional language, program flow in Befunge can proceed in any of the four cardinal directions: up, down, left, or right. Befitting of this, the Befunge programming language does not have a
facility for generating random numbers. Instead, it generates random directions -- the ? instruction randomly selects up, down, left, or right.

This generator exploits that by presenting a grid of literal characters, with ? instructions at the intersections. Characters are accumulated as the program wanders this grid, back-and-forth, until it gets to the edge, at which point a word is output, and the process repeats until we get 50,000 words.

Due to this method, the random strings of characters produced by this generator have a certain quality that is not evident when using most other methods of random generation. (The strings also tend to be very long, and thus the generated novel is kind of huge, about 1.5M.)

Preview

XKR XMEEHOROIEGGXECGGGTXDLNCGEETTTRRHH

YAMSEHXRPPRLLRPPTHIVEEFFASSEHHMKR YFAEHTEET YCAVMMEEMMVVMHYIR XKIETTTRRORHHYOEPTXTRIIRXBXTHH

XGEMECGMMAAAAGEKRRIIRXLOEEOMTXXTPREBBEEXTXLETHHRRHHRR YEKRORTT XKRYIRRROIEEIKKKMHTEET

YXIIENEVVENNEVVVIIIIMHXLEXXTTEIKMHTTIMHRKKRTGTTCEXT XUEVMH XCCCFVVACEKRHHHHYARRREBBTTXTRRYINUEOOOKBBBXTRRHHYTGTTTYMMMPAAAIUUEOMTXXXEETRRXRRNCGXBBEEBBXT YUGUUGOFCFFFASSEHXNEXT

YEKR YCFOURRRNBBTOIFESEMIIEEECFAEH

(You can think of it as a kind of fireworks...)

[greg-kennedy]

What the fuck, how did I miss this, it's fantastic