The Great Automatic Grammatizator: 1. The Great Automatic Grammatizator Summary & Analysis

In his office, Mr. John Bohlen thanks Adolph Knipe for his significant contributions to their electrical engineering firm’s latest project, an advanced calculator capable of solving even the most complex mathematical problems in seconds. As a reward for his hard work, Mr. Bohlen urges Knipe to take a weeklong vacation, but Knipe seems indifferent to their achievement. The two men hold little regard for each other—Bohlen finds Knipe unkempt and dull, while Knipe considers Bohlen irritating, with unsettlingly thin lips and a purplish complexion.

That evening, Knipe pours himself a whisky and returns to a story he had started writing earlier, though he struggles with how to continue. Suddenly, a new idea seizes him: a machine, like their calculator, that could generate flawless writing by simply following the “mathematical” rules of grammar. For the next two weeks, Knipe works obsessively, compiling hundreds of pages of calculations, formulas, vocabulary lists, and other notes to feed the machine and bring his vision to life.

Knipe presents his notes to Mr. Bohlen and proposes building a machine, the Great Automatic Grammatizator, that can generate well-written and creative short stories in minutes. Bohlen initially dismisses the idea, doubting it would be worth the time or money, but Knipe quickly persuades him by emphasizing the machine’s potential profitability. He explains that magazines pay thousands for creative stories, and with this invention, they could mass-produce and sell fiction to the most prestigious publications, eventually dominating the market. Knipe reveals that he has written hundreds of stories himself, none of which have been accepted for publication, and his frustration led him to develop the machine.

Knipe points out that the machine’s stories will need authors. Seeking prestige, Knipe suggests that he and Bohlen can put their own names on some of the work and become published writers. To make their operation seem legitimate, they plan to establish a publishing house and use both real and fictional bylines. Six months later, the Grammatizator is complete, but when they first test it, it produces gibberish. After some adjustments, Knipe gets it working, and soon, they are churning out and selling stories to major magazines like Reader’s Digest.

As their names become increasingly recognized in the literary world, Knipe and Bohlen expand their operation, refining the Grammatizator to produce full-length novels. Bohlen, eager to create something more meaningful than the light, formulaic stories Knipe has been selling under Bohlen’s name, plans to engineer a “serious” novel. He accuses Knipe of reserving the best short stories for himself, but Knipe assures him that once the machine is adapted for novel writing, Bohlen will be able to craft exactly the kind of story he envisions.

Within a few months, Knipe equips the Grammatizator with a series of “pre-selector” buttons, allowing the operator to choose specific plots, writing styles, themes, and character types. He also installs foot pedals to control the level and intensity of “passion” throughout each story. After walking Bohlen through the new controls, he lets him “write” his first novel. Bohlen’s initial attempt produces a bizarre and vulgar story, but on his second try, he successfully generates a novel to his satisfaction.

As Adolph Knipe’s Literary Agency floods the market with novels, Knipe devises a plan to eliminate competition by buying out the 50 best-selling English-language authors—though Bohlen doesn’t think writers will take kindly to Knipe’s intentions. Meeting with each writer personally, he offers them a yearly sum in exchange for never publishing their own writing again. The first two authors reject Knipe outright, offended by the proposal, but he soon finds success with a romance novelist who, impressed by the machine’s capabilities, eagerly accepts the deal.

Within months, Knipe secures agreements from the majority of the authors on his list. By the end of the Great Automatic Grammatizator’s first operative year, it is responsible for producing half of all books in English. The weary narrator warns that “worse is yet to come,” as more writers consider selling out their names and originality for a lifelong paycheck. But the narrator clings to hope, resisting the temptation themselves. A “golden” contract lies on their desk, their nine hungry children crying in the next room—but the narrator refrains from signing, asking for the strength to “let [their] children starve.”