Appendix B Stone Soup With Pixels: The Authors
THE STONE SOUP STORY
Once upon a time, somewhere in Eastern Europe, there was a great famine.
People jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even
from their friends and neighbors. One day a peddler drove his wagon into
a village, sold a few of his wares, and began asking questions as if he
planned to stay for the night.
[No! No! It was three Russian Soldiers! - Lee Crocker]
[Wait! I heard it was a Wandering Confessor! - Doug Quinn]
[Well *my* kids have a book that uses Russian Soldiers! - Bert]
[Look, who's writing this documentation, anyway? - Monte]
[Ah, but who gets it *last* and gets to upload it? - Bert]
"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "Better
keep moving on."
"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of
making some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled an iron
cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under
it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a
velvet bag and dropped it into the water.
By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the
square or watched from their windows. As the peddler sniffed the "broth"
and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their
skepticism.
"Ahh," the peddler said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty
stone soup. Of course, stone soup with CABBAGE -- that's hard to beat."
Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved
from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "Capital!" cried the
peddler. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt
beef as well, and it was fit for a king."
The village butcher managed to find some salt beef...and so it went,
through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was
indeed a delicious meal for all. The villagers offered the peddler a
great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and
traveled on the next day. And from that time on, long after the famine
had ended, they reminisced about the finest soup they'd ever had.
***
That's the way Fractint has grown, with quite a bit of magic, although
without the element of deception. (You don't have to deceive programmers
to make them think that hours of painstaking, often frustrating work is
fun... they do it to themselves.)
It wouldn't have happened, of course, without Benoit Mandelbrot and the
explosion of interest in fractal graphics that has grown from his work
at IBM. Or without the example of other Mandelplotters for the PC. Or
without those wizards who first realized you could perform Mandelbrot