A Retired Engineer’s ‘What If’

As Reviewed in National Society of Black Engineer’s Magazine - November/December 2007

Inventions

By Paul L. Woodring

Whether we’re inspired by or covetous of the innovation-to riches stories of Wunderkind such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like, it’s not as if we don’t know those stories.  They are required reading and for good cause.  But did you ever wonder what it might have been like for a talented black engineer and inventor, with Gates-level technical skills and the requisite entrepreneurial courage, to head a start-up in the go-go 70’s?  Paul L. Woodring painstakingly details the answer in his debut novel, Inventions, by describing the life of his protagonist, Robert Watson.

Although softened a bit by two plot devices - sepia flashbacks to defining moments in Watson’s childhood, and dream sequences featuring frightened images of Emmett Till - “Inventions” rolls out with orderliness of a detailed-driven work diary from which an engineer’s schematic might be drawn.  We follow Watson’s life as he shuns the security of a corporate engineering job offer to become a principal in a risky technical start-up.  And we watch him rise to lead the company when its key deliverable turns out to be a computer of his own design.

By the way, risk taking and insecurity are not reserved to Watson’s workplace, but also are evident in the character’s rocky love life.  Accounts of Watson’s many romantic missteps are presented in counterpoint to his technical and business competence.  Although Woodring’s cast of female supporting characters include mostly brainy and accomplished exemplars, could annoy, i.e. the author’s use of the term “girl” to describe females regardless of age, and his tendency to have all of he female characters desirous of intimacy with the protagonist.

It is worth noting that Woodring is a retired engineer, turned author and consultant, whose career is rooted in computers and microprocessors.  The author says “Inventions” is a work of fiction for which he drew on places he had traveled, technologies and technologists he had known and discrimination he had experienced during his distinguished career.

The bottom line?  Literature scholars might argue this novel does not meet established criteria for deftly plotted, page turning fiction.  But it does function well as a subjective, fleshed-out photograph of an era and an industry.  Didactic to its core, “Inventions” can serve as a hand surrogate for young engineers who don’t have an experienced mentor to regale them with stories of how it was back in the day and to encourage their entrepreneurial dreams.

Reviewed by D’Nese L.A. Moore