There are a couple of really minor in-jokes in what I've done
for Traveller, but there was a nearly totally accidental beaut
in the "Terror in the Light" Merc:2k article for the Horror issue.
The company which owns the oil rig was origionally named SCOCO,
South Coast Oil COmpany, along the lines of ARCO and CONOCO.
I intentionally put the CO on because there's a computer software
and operating systems company named Santa Cruz Operation which is
referred to as SCO, which several of my friends work at and
whose software is pretty well known.... and I didn't want
to link the real SCO with this sort of wierdness.
Unbeknownst to me, between receipt of the article at GDW and
their publishing it, whoever edited it changed SCOCO to SCO.
# Publishing Tip #1: If there's a change you really, really don't
# want made in an article, make sure that you explain what it
# is and why in the cover letter.
That would have been fine, except that GDW does not normally send
galleys of your work (the preprints, essentially, so you can
do a final authors reality-check on them) before publication.
# Publishing Tip #2: Ask for Galleys
So... lo and behold, issue hits game store nearby, I pick it up
off shelf and start to read it and in the third line or so,
still in large type... "SCO". Games of Berkeley employees
look at me strangely following loud scream of "They did WHAT???"
I fired off an email letter to SCO appologizing for what happened
and explaining how. They laughed and only asked for a copy of the
issue for their collection of non-Santa Cruz Operation uses of
"SCO", which they keep for amusements sake. I fired off a
real letter to Michelle Sturgeon with a "Do you have any idea
of what you've done to me, there's a whole computer company
which is half-sure I did this on purpose...!" central point,
though making it clear it wasn't a real problem and everyone
seemed to be amused.
- -george william herbert