Profiles

Famous writers from Profiles

Profiles was this weird intersection in time. I don't know why it happened, but a lot of writers who later became famous wrote for us, though David Gerrold was established before he wrote for Profiles [Profiles, July 1984]. Gerrold wrote the teleplay for Trouble with Tribbles, for the original Star Trek TV series, the novel The Man Who Folded Himself, and the War Against the Chtorr series. Robert J. Sawyer and Ted Chiang, both later multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winners, wrote for us. So did Jack Nimersheim, who was nominated for a Hugo. In the mid-90s Ted Chiang wrote The Story of Your Life, which was later made into the movie Arrival, with Amy Adams.
(Interview with Marshall Mosley)

Profiles Q&A Column

I had a column called Q&A. Which was completely made up. You know, it was supposedly questions from customers. I made up the question, I wrote the answer. I tried to come up with things that I thought people should know. It was things that weren't immediately obvious, like a lot of people who bought CPM machines didn't know CPM had a command processor. It was basically batch files that CPM versioned, or how to use PIP, because PIP was counterintuitive. It was PIP then target then source instead of PIP then source then target.

I would write up what I had run into, or what support had told me about. I would make up a name, Joe Cochrane from Akron, Ohio wants to know blah blah. And that was how I did that. But the articles were very different because the articles were ferociously factual. The column, that was just an excuse to be able to impart information.

But Diane Ingalls would not tolerate for one moment being loosey goosey with the facts. She'd walk in and hit me in the back of the head.
(Interview with Marshall Mosley)

Early Profiles avoided talking about Kaypro

FR: The earlier profiles appeared to almost avoid talking about Kaypro products.

Well, the original (actually the second) editor, and I never worked for him, I think I met him once before he left. His name was Tyler Sperry. He was about 5'5". He was a careerist.

He had a vision for how profiles would help him in his career. And it wasn't to impart information to Kaypro users. It wasn't to give good work in return for employment to the Kaypro. It was about Tyler and how Tyler was going to use this to climb to the next step. He wasn't real involved with it.

When he left and Gwyn Price took over, she was a very impressive woman. Hard charging, good humored, just nice. Didn't take anything from anyone, but a very, very positive person. And that's when the magazine changed. More about technical detail, more about what customers needed, more about what they were interested in. It was like, probably four months before I started working at the magazine.
(Interview with Marshall Mosley)