Introduction to this edition
While the tale can still be found at various places around the web, the
illustrated version presented here is sadly no longer accessible at its
original home. Fortunately, thanks to the Internet Archive's diligent efforts
to permanently preserve the ephemeral web, I was able to retrieve all of the
source files and images from Bob's previous home. Which means that I can now
present to you these lovingly-reconstructed pages, formatted to preserve the
style and presentation of the original tale.
I didn't create any of what follows — words, pictures, none of it is mine. I
don't know anything more about the people who did create it, than
what's found here. I simply felt that it would be a shame if one of the
Internet's great pre-Web* epics ended up squirreled away in some
capture files at the Internet Archive. Bob earned his time in the
spotlight.
*
(Yes, I realize October 1993 isn't technically pre-Web. But as a
USENET thread, Bob's story remains one of the last examples of the Old Ways™— the means by which we disseminated such
things, before the ascendance of the WWW.)