Mumbai: How many books can a writer pen in one lifetime? Shakespeare, considered among the most prolific of authors, wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets and several poems in a 30-year-long career. Few have bettered the Bard, among them a science fiction writer who, according to the Guinness Book, published 1,084 works before he died at age 74.

But now there’s one writer on the block who has stopped counting his books in tens and hundreds.

With 200,000 titles, Philip M Parker is, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet”. He has accomplished the feat with the help of a computer program that automatically generates books, 20 minutes and 12 pence — “in electricity charges” — being all it takes to create one.

Parker, a professor at Instead, the international business school in Fontainebleau, France, says he created the computer program using a little bit of artificial intelligence so that it mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for conducting a particular form of online research. A typical study may be in a topic like The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States —a 677-page volume Parker’s program has created.

Other Parker books are: The World Market for Machinery Used in the Grain Milling Industry or for the Working of Cereals or Dried Leguminous Vegetables Excluding Farm-Type Machinery: A 2007 Global Trade Perspective and The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome.

There’s one on India too: ‘The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India’, a 144-page treatise priced at $495.

But who may be interested in buying such a book, and for such an absurd price tag? “Only one person in the world may be interested in that,” Parker told the New York Times. “Probably a strategic planner for a multinational that makes those.”

Experts say Parker's titles are a form of spam. Artificial intelligence researchers back the opinion by saying the most advanced computer is far from being what someone would consider an author.

"There is a continuous spectrum, also known as a slippery slope, between a program that automatically typesets a telephone directory and a program that generates English texts at the level of variety you would expect from a typical human English speaker," Chung-chieh Shan, an assistant professor in the computer science department of Rutgers, was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

"The former program is easy to write, the latter program is very difficult; in fact, the holy grail of linguistics. Like Mad-Libs, Parker's programs probably lie somewhere between the two ends of this spectrum."

But Parker is unfazed. His next project is computer-generated romance novels. How does he plan to pull it off ? "I've already set it (the algorithm) up," he says. "There are only so many body parts."

Source : DNA