Roger was writing reviews right until the very end. One day in the hospital I suggested that he take a break from work-related writing and write something creative that made him feel like he did when he was writing science fiction articles for fanzines when he was a boy. He began writing "The Thinking Molecules of Titan", a story about space exploration set in part at his beloved University of Illinois.

He never got a chance to finish it.

In the spirit of Roger's belief in crowd participation, we're having a contest to help complete the story.



Write your own ending and email it to us at contests@ebertdigital.com, with the subject header "TITAN ENDING", followed by your FULL NAME.

We'll gather the submissions through July 18 and narrow it down to a select group of finalists, solicit your votes on which is the best, and announce the winner on the site. — Chaz





The story so far:













he text message came as Mason was dipping fried lake perch into the tartar sauce. This was in the Capital, Campustown bar that offered an elementary but cheap menu, on the grounds — the owner McHugh once told him — that if someone left looking for food they might never come back. The message on Mason's phone said,He reflected that any pattern by definition would be untold years in age and would not change now that the Titan Listening Lab had recorded it. He finished his perch, his French fries and his canned creamed corn. He closed with Apple Crumb Cake and the last of his beer. He said goodbye to his friends Alex and Claire.

"Later," Alex said. Claire may possibly have nodded. They were leaning over shoeboxes filled with punch cards, part of their project to rebuild a museum working model of PLATO, the old computer program created on the Illinois campus in the 1960s. The Capital was a vaguely bohemian place surrounded by disgusting undergraduate hangouts where underage students drank illegal beers. This in Mason's opinion was the upside of their lamentable tendency to stand outside and lean over the sidewalk to vomit.