Cheap Complex Devices

Below you'll find links to the first parts of Cheap Complex Devices in web-friendly HTML, and to the entire book in printer-friendly PDF. Feel free to read, save, print, copy and share among your friends. It's available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial license. When you purchase the printed book, I think you will find the format much nicer and easier to read. And also I'll make some money, and I think we'll both feel good about that, won't we? Read the first parts of the book in HTML Download the complete book (PDF)

Computers can play chess as well as any grandmaster. They can diagnose cancer as well as any oncologist, find oil as well as any seismologist. But can they do that most human of all activities: can they tell a story? Read Cheap Complex Devices and find out. This volume, edited by John Compton Sundman, (an erstwhile technical writer whose out-of-print manuals command large sums at online auctions, now a recluse), contains the two winning entries of the novel-writing contest sponsored by the Society for Analytical Engines (SAE). The introduction to Cheap Complex Devices, written by the SAE Contest Committee, contains the history of the contest and explains the criteria by which the entries were judged. "It is odd and unnerving to review novellas written by software constructs, especially novellas as good as those found in the pages of Cheap Complex Devices. Skeptics will scoff; ignore them. Read Cheap Complex Devices for yourself, and get unnerved. Get a good grip on your human self esteem, and prepare to be enlightened. The future is here, we cannot outrun it. Confront it, warm to it, come to love it in the sublime prose of this book." - Hugh Betcham Betcham Review Services Buy now using Paypal Buy now using old-school paper check in the old-school regular mail.