August Derleth

“ He's not quite perfect yet, you see, Mr. Harrigan.'
"I saw, all right. I saw that Herman had become his inventor's obsession in a very real sense. I felt sorry for him but I had known enough inventors to understand what had happened. They work so much alone they're apt to over-emphasize the importance of their work. The same thing holds true for authors and composers, I suppose. They lose perspective—it's little more than that.
"And my friend Maugham seemed to have lost his."
Maugham was relieved at Harrigan's going. He sat for a few moments after the door had closed behind the reporter. ”

“ And now and then a Quintus Maugham
is a bit too successful for his own health.
What is a Derleth? The question pops up frequently in fantasy circles. The general consensus seems to be that a Derleth is a sort of human windmill that plucks finished manuscripts from the breeze while waving its arms in circles, printing and publishing same with its own machinery. In truth the Derleth output is prodigious, as it has been for many a year ... enough to keep rolling the presses of his own publishing firm (Arkham) as well as to keep other publishers well supplied. Here is top-flight Derleth. ”

“ You get used to situations like that involving inventive or creative people of course. You think nothing of it. I didn't, I know, though I was possessed of some curiosity about Herman. But out in his neighborhood, where people knew nothing about Herman, certain rumors began to circulate—that Maugham had hired an assistant, and that the assistant now did all Maugham's errands for him. ”

“ I said, pouring more sherry into his glass.
"Herman was his robot. A neat well-oiled scrupulously-clean mechanical man in the process of being born. He was run by electrical impulses and was a good deal more self-sufficient than the traditional pushbutton robot of an earlier day. ”

“ I suppose Herman could have been taken apart and shipped on ahead. Then he could have been reassembled and set to working again."
"But how do you know Herman went along to Nevada?" I asked, pouring Harrigan yet another drink.
"By one of those ridiculous mistakes the newspapers sometimes make. Maugham hadn't been out west two months before a flash flood tore through the village in which he'd set up housekeeping and inventing. Maugham was one of the victims. The paper nearest there carried a picture of Maugham and his robot, which by that time was public property out there. ”

“ He had taken hold of my arm and I could feel his hand trembling.
"'I'd like to know,' I answered, 'but it's not that important. Forget it. I'm a little dubious about the scientists anyway. Whether you worship Science or God sometimes gets to seem like six of one and a half-dozen of the other. ”