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"I'm strictly an ivory-tower person. I can explain things but I can't do things."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Van Goom's Gambit | ||
| A chessboard pattern that unhinges the mind of any player who sees it. |
An early take on the idea that pattern recognition may be more dangerous than it seems.
| And what of Von Goom's Gambit? Chess is a game of logic. Thirty-two pieces move on a board of sixty-four squares, colored alternately dark and light. As they move they form patterns. Some of these patterns are pleasing to the logical mind of man, and some are not. They show what man is capable of and what is beyond his Take any position of the pieces on the chessboard. Usually it tells of the logical or semi-logical plans of the players, their strategy in playing for a win or a draw, and their personalities. If you see a pattern from the King s Gambit Accepted, you know that both players are tacticians, that the fight will be brief but fierce...
Now suppose someone discovers by accident or design a pattern on the chessboard that is more than displeasing, an alien pattern that tells unspeakable things about the mind of the player, man in general and the order of the universe. Suppose no normal man can look at such a pattern and remain normal. Surely such a pattern must have been formed by Von Goom’s Gambit. I wish the story could end here, but I fear it will not end for a long time. History has shown that discoveries cannot be unmade. Two months ago in Camden, New Jersey, a forty-tliree year old man was found turned to stone staring at a position on a chessboard... |
| Technovelgy from Von Goom's Gambit,
by Victor Contoski. Published by Fantasy Science Fiction in 1966 Additional resources -
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'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life... in his hands.'
'My homeland is being threatened by the Replicators. Thus far all attempts to stop them have failed.'
'A robobus had just rolled up to the curb.'
'And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.'
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
