Fred Saberhagen, in the Introduction he wrote for PAWN TO INFINITY
(Ace Books, June 1982), made some interesting comments about how much
chess and science fiction have in common. I'll quote some of what he
said from page 1 of that book: "Chess and fantastic fiction (I use the
term here to include science fiction) began an enthusiastic encounter
with each other at least as far back as Lewis Carroll, and the mating is
still in progress. Both contain strong elements of conflict--Emmanuel
Lasker, one of the great players of all time, defined chess as a
struggle--and both are set in worlds where time and space are subject to
transformation, the ordinary rules of human existence do not apply.
Therefore both tend to appeal to the same kind of mind; an interest in
the fantastic is very often a sign of interest in chess, and vice
versa." I used the text found in that book of Anderson's "The Immortal
Game" for this essay. And what Saberhagen said about fantastic fiction
fans often being interested in chess is certainly true of me!
Before
getting down to a discussion of Anderson's use of chess, collected from
some of his works, I shall give a general overview of how science
fiction writers have used that game. I quoted the following text from
the article "Games and Sports," by Bryan Stableford and Peter Nicholls
(THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION, St. Martin's Press, 1993, page
467): "The game which has most frequently fascinated sf writers is
chess, featured in Charles L. HARNESS's "The Chess Players (1953) and
Poul ANDERSON's "The Immortal Game" (1954) as well as Malzberg's TACTICS
OF CONQUEST. John Brunner's THE SQUARES OF THE CITY (1965) has a plot
based on a real chess game, and Ian WATSON's QUEENMAGIC, KINGMAGIC
(1986) includes a world structured as one (as well as worlds structured
according to other games, including Snakes and Ladders!). Gerard Klein
built the mystique of the game into STARMASTER'S GAMBIT (1958; trans.
1973). A version of chess crops up in the works of Edgar Rice
Burroughs--in THE CHESSMEN OF MARS (1922) -- and a rather more exotic
variant plays an important role in THE FAIRY CHESSMEN (1951; vt
CHESSBOARD PLANET; vt THE FAR REALITY) by Lewis Padgett (Henry KUTTNER
and C.L. MOORE). An anthology of chess stories is PAWN TO INFINITY
(anth 1982) ed Fred SABERHAGEN."
The
authors quoted immediately above also discussed how electronic arcade
games and home computer games inspired many stories using such things.
Stableford and Nicholls then wrote (also on page 467 of the same
ENCYCLOPEDIA: "Stories of space battles whose protagonists are revealed
in the last line to be icons in a computer-game "shoot 'em up" may have
succeeded Shaggy God stories (---> ADAM AND EVE) as the archetypal
folly perpetrated by novice writers (although Fredric Brown's similarly
plotted "Recessional" [1960], where the protagonists are chessmen has
been much anthologized)."
Poul
Anderson was fond of chess, so I now quote some examples of how he
mentioned or used that game from his works. In Chapter I of THE LONG
WAY HOME (Ace Books, 1955, as NO WORLD OF THEIR OWN. Republished in 1978
by Gregg Press as THE LONG WAY HOME), readers will find this on page 3:
"Saris Hronna and Robert Matsumoto were the EXPLORER's chess fiends,
they had spent many hours hunched over the board, and it was a strange
thing to watch them: a human whose ancestors had left Japan for America
and a creature from a planet a thousand light-years distant, caught in
the trap of some ages-dead Persian. More than the gaping emptinesses he
had traversed, more than the suns and planets he had seen spinning
through darkness and vacuum, it gave Langley a sense of the immensity
and omnipotence of time."
The
game of chess is also seen in Anderson's story "Que Donn'rez Vous?"
(TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS (Macmillan, 1970) on page 151:
K-B2.
Q-K7. "Check," said Roy Pearson.
Captain Elias ben Judah did not swear, because it was against his
principles. But his comment was violent enough. "Second blinking check
in a row," he added, moving the black king to refuge at Kt3."
"And the third," said his operations manager in a parched chuckle. The white queen jumped in his artificial hand to Q8.
One thing I have pondered over with some puzzlement is why Poul
Anderson, when he happened to mention chess MOVES, used the English or
Descriptive notation formerly used by most Anglo/American chess players
for recording moves of the game. It would have been more "science
fictional" if he had used the "Algebraic" notation now dominant for the
recording of chess moves. After all, as long ago as H.J.R. Murray's
massive A HISTORY OF CHESS (1913), wherein the author advocated and used
that system, many English speaking chess players must have known of the
existence of Algebraic notation. Anderson's use of English notation has
caused some of his SF stories to "seem" just a bit dated. The most
likely reason for this is simple enough: the English notation was what
Anderson was FAMILIAR with. The rise and spread of chess computers of
all kinds using only Algebraic notation after 1976 has driven
Descriptive notation into extinction. (I myself used first the English
notation after learning how to play chess--but switched over to
Algebraic notation without difficulty after I was given my first chess
computer in the early 1980's.)
In Anderson's THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER (USA, Pyramid
Books, 1964), in Chapter 4, is another mention of the game: "...a chess
set stood by Fraser's tobacco jar. He'd always liked chess and poker
too much for his own good, he thought in the back of his brain: they
could become a way of life if you didn't watch them." I think this can
reasonably be understood as being Anderson's personal view of these
games.
The most numerous references to chess I found in the works of Poul
Anderson came from his Technic Civilization series. For example, the
unnamed narrator in "The Problem of Pain" mentions chess: "...he plays
chess at just about my level of skill," page 36 of THE EARTHBOOK OF
STORMGATE (Berkley, 1978).
I
now wish to discuss how Anderson mentioned chess in his Time Patrol
story "Brave To Be A King" (THE TIME PATROL, Tor [1991], page 53). Keith
Denison, a Patrol agent Shanghaied by a powerful Median politician to
pose as Cyrus the Great, was conversing with Manse Everard and said:
"Kobad the Mage has some original thoughts, and he's the only man alive
who dares beat me at chess." The problem is this, chess did not exist
in that king's time, and would not for more than one thousand years. As
H.J.R. Murray wrote on page 47 of A HISTORY OF CHESS (1913. Rpt. by
Benjamin Press, Northampton, MA, undated): "The date when it occurred to
some Indian to represent the chaturanga and its evolutions in a game
cannot be fixed, though naturally it cannot be earlier than the
organization of the army on which it is based. Chess was certainly in
existence in the 7th century A.D., and it had already at that time
penetrated to Persia." So it was mistaken of Anderson to say chess was
being played in the Persia of Cyrus the Great (unless we are to assume
Keith Denison taught the game at least to a few persons, such as Kobad
the Mage).
Chess is also seen in ENSIGN FLANDRY in Chapter 2. Commander Max
Abrams, the officer in charge of Terra's Naval Intelligence operations
on the planet Starkad, was not only a chess player, but also, in one of
those curiously respectful, half-friendly relationships which can show
up even between enemies in opposing military forces, was playing a game
of correspondence chess with Runei the Wanderer, the Merseian officer in
command of the Roidhunate's forces on the same planet. Merseia was the
great rival and enemy of the Terran Empire in the second half of
Anderson's Technic Civilization stories. But even Merseia, however
hostile it was to mankind, the race which had not only saved its planet
(see "Day of Burning") and from whom it learned how to reach the stars,
couldn't help being culturally influenced by the Terrans in some ways
(such as adopting chess and the drinking of tea). Getting back to the
point, in Chapter 2 we read: "Time must pass while the word seeped
through channels. Abrams opened a drawer, got out his magnetic
chessboard, and pondered. He hadn't actually been ready to play.
However, Runei the Wanderer was too fascinated by their match to refuse
an offer if he had a spare moment lying around; and damn if any
Merseian son of a mother was going to win at a Terran game." We see
Abrams reflecting on what move to make in the next paragraph:
"Hm....promising development here, with the white bishop...no, wait,
then the queen might come under attack...tempting to sic a computer onto
the problem...betcha the opposition did...maybe not...ah, so."
Regretfully, we see Anderson still using the antiquated Descriptive
notation as Abrams gave Runei his move: "Knight to King's Bishop four."
One of the most extensive uses of chess to be found in the works of
Anderson is in his novel A CIRCUS OF HELLS, on Wayland, a mineral rich
moon of a Jupiter type gas giant planet. Centuries before, shortly
before the complete collapse of the Polesotechnic League, a mining
company had installed a self aware, conscious level computer for
overseeing mining operations. Because Wayland was not a world suitable
for long term occupation by humans. Knowledge of Wayland was lost
during the Time of Troubles and even after the Empire arose to restore
order. To help preserve its sanity during the centuries of isolation
from outside contact, the self aware computer played chess and variants
of chess. In Chapter VIII of A CIRCUS OF HELLS, this is what one of the
robotic White Knights looked like: "A new kind of robot was approaching
from within the sphere. It was about the size of a man. The skin
gleamed golden. Iridescence was lovely over the great batlike wings
that helped the springing of its two long hoofed and spurred legs. The
body was a horizontal barrel, a balancing tail behind, a neck and head
rearing in front. With its goggling optical and erect audio sensors,
its muzzle that perhaps held the computer, its mane of erect antennae,
that head looked eerily equine. From its forepart, swivel mounted,
thrust a lance."
As already stated, the Wayland computer developed elaborate
variants of chess to help preserve its sanity during centuries of
isolation. As Flandry explained in Chapter X of A CIRCUS OF HELLS: "A
thinking capability like that, with nothing but routine to handle, no
new input, decade after decade--" Flandry shivered. "Br-rr! You must
know what sensory deprivation does to organic sophonts. Our computer
rescued itself by creating something complicated and unpredictable to
watch." Almost the only criticism I would make about A CIRCUS OF HELLS
is that too little is shown us of the Wayland AI (Artificial
Intelligence). My view is that Anderson could have devoted a few more
pages to that computer, showing us in more detail both its history and
how it reacted to humans again making contact with it. Flandry did say
the AI was pathetically eager to resume normal operations.
A few more examples of the widespread, ordinary playing of chess by
both humans and non humans within the sphere of space covered by
Technic Civilization can be found in additional stories set by Anderson
in that series. In Chapter XX of A CIRCUS OF HELLS, after Dominic
Flandry and his prisoner Ydwyr the Seeker had agreed on the terms and
conditions of the latter's captivity and release, Ydwyr asked: "With
that made clear, would you like a game of chess?" In Chapter XII of THE
PLAGUE OF MASTERS, after Flandry's friends had rescued him from
Biocontrol Central, we read: "Flandry bent his own head above
respectfully folded hands, hoping the plumes would shadow his face
enough. A couple of men, cross-legged, above a chessboard, looked up in
curiosity and kept on looking." Years later, in Chapter VIII of WE
CLAIM THESE STARS, as Flandry and Catherine Kittredge were traveling to
the planet Vixen, readers will see: "Flandry discovered that Kit could
give him a workout, when they played handball, down in the hold [of his
space ship]. And her stubborn chess game defeated his swashbuckling
tactics most of the time." Last, near the very end of THE GAME OF
EMPIRE, in Chapter 23, we see Flandry using metaphors from chess: "We
play the game move by move, and never see far ahead----the game of
empire, of life, whatever you want to call it--and what the score will
be when all the pieces at last go back into the box, who knows?"
But the story where we see Poul Anderson using chess most deeply
came from his early years as a science fiction writer : "The Immortal
Game" (THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, February 1954). The
story was based on a game of chess played by Adolf Anderssen (White)
and L.A.B.F. Kieseritzky (Black) in London, 1851. Anderson used MOSTLY
the exact moves of this game around which to build a fascinating and
thought provoking tale. The Immortal Game was especially interesting
because of how White deliberately sacrificed the Queen and both Rooks to
trap and checkmate Black. This beautiful game deserves to be included
with this essay.
However, when I played through the moves of the game as given in
"The Immortal Game" and wrote them out, I discovered that not all the
moves were the same as the ones I listed below in "Immortal Game One"
(or IG1, for short). The moves in IG1 belong to the game as recorded in
the most widely accepted sources. I checked the entry for the Immortal
Game on page 150 of THE OXFORD COMPANION TO CHESS, by David Hooper and
Kenneth Whyld (Oxford University Press, 1984), and the moves are the
same as in IG1. But the moves in "Immortal Game Two" (IG2) do not
exactly match those in IG1 (see Black's third moves in both lines, for
example). I hope these discrepancies came merely from Anderson using a
different source for this game's moves. Because it would not have been
right for an author to change what the standard sources gave as the
moves for this game.
Immortal Game One. 1e4 e5 2f4 exf4 3Bc4 Qh4+ 4Kf1 b5 5Bxb5
Nf6 6Nf3 Qh6 7d3 Nh5 8Nh4 Qg5? 9Nf5 c6 10g4 Nf6 11Rg1 cxBb5 12h4
Qg6 13 h5 Qg5 14Qf3 Ng8 15Bxf4 Qf6 16Nc3 Bc5 17Nd5!? Qxb2 18Bd6 Bxg1
19e5 QxRa1+ 20Ke2 Na6 21Nxg7+ Kd8 22Qf6+ Nxf6 23Be7 # Mate
Immortal Game Two. 1e4 e5 2f4 exf4 3Bc4 b5 4Bxb5 Qh4+ 5Kf1 Nf6 6Nf3
Qh6 7d3 Nh5 8Nh4 c6 9Nf5 Qg5 10g4 Nf6 11Rg1 cxBb5 12h4 Qg6 13h5 Qg5
14Qf3 Ng8 15Bxf4 Qf6 16Nc3 Bc5 17Nd5 Qxb2 18Bd6 Bxg1 19e5 QxRa1+ 20Ke2
Na6 21Nxg7+ Kd8 22Qf6+ Nxf6 23Be7 # Mate
I list the moves in IG1 which differ from those given in IG2:
3,4,5,8,9, and from move 10, they are exactly the same. I twice checked
and played out the moves given in "The Immortal Game" and they still
came out as recorded in IG2. I don't understand why the moves in
3,4.5,8, and 9 are different from those in the most commonly accepted
record of the Immortal Game (as given in the Hooper/Whyld book). I even
checked online at Wikipedia, and it agrees with THE OXFORD COMPANION TO
CHESS.
Poul Anderson's "The Immortal Game" has to be among the earliest
(if not the earliest) of his stories touching on the themes of AIs and
intelligent, self aware computers. In this story individual computers
controlled its own individual chessmen, plus all the computers on a
given side were linked together to form a kind of group mind programmed
to obey the laws of chess and to make the best possible moves. This was
part of a project studying what happens from using computers tied
together in multiple linkages (PAWN TO INFINITY, "The Immortal Game,"
page 69).
An observer, visiting the scientist overseeing this project,
wondered whether these computers shared many of the qualities of a human
mind, going on to speculate the computers
had become conscious and self aware, to have minds. An idea his host
regarded with skepticism. His visitor argued that the feedback
arrangement of these computers was analogous to the human nervous
system. He then suggested that, even given that the individual
computers were constrained by the group linkage, they still had
individual personalities. Next he wondered if the computers interpreted
the game of chess as the interplay of free will and necessity. And did
these individual computers interpret the data of their moves as
equivalent to the Churchillian "blood, sweat, and tears" (PAWN, pages
69-70)?
It is not my purpose in this article
to give a complete commentary on Anderson's "The Immortal Game" *
(despite writing about that story at greater than expected length). But
a few more comments is called for. The viewpoint character of that
story is the Black King's Bishop, called Rogard. As the computers were
switched on, Rogard was stirred to wakefulness and gazed ahead: "Away
there, across the somehow unreal red-and-black distances of the steppe,
he saw sunlight flash on armor and caught the remote wild flutter of
lifted banners. So it is war, he thought. So we must fight again (PAWN,
page 57). Which means the man visiting the scientist was right, these
computers were self aware, conscious, and thinking entities. And the
computers could even feel love, as we see on pages 58-59 of PAWN TO
INFINITY: "Looking beyond Flambard, the Bishop saw his Queen, Evyan the
Fair, and there was something within him which stumbled and broke into
fire. Very tall and lovely was the gray-eyed Queen of Cinnabar, where
she stood in armor and looked out at the growing battle."
And I like this bit from the story, on
page 62 of PAWN: "There had never been anything but this meaningless
war, there would never be aught else, and when Rogard tried to think
beyond the moment when the fight had begun, or the moment when it would
end, there was only an abyss of darkness." Here we see one of the
computerized chessmen groping with issues of fate and necessity. And
this is more clearly brought out on page 63 of PAWN: "Rogard tried once
more to get out of his square and go to Evyan's aid, but his will would
not carry him. The Barrier held, invisible and uncrossable, and the Law
held, the cruel and senseless Law which said a man must stand by and
watch his lady be slain, and he railed at the bitterness of it, and
lapsed into a gray waiting." Rogard was trying to violate the Laws of
chess, which he had been programmed to obey. Even the mere intent and
attempt indicates he had free will, at least in his mind. And we get a
hint at Churchillian determination at move 20 when Rogard saw the White
King, MIKILLATI, move into e2 to escape Evyan's check: "Peering into
his face, Rogard felt a sudden coldness. There was no defeat there, it
was craft and knowledge and an unbending steel will--..."
Rogard had come to realize that the
wars of Cinnabar (Black) with LEUKAS (White) were senseless and of no
use to either side: "No-No-you fool!" Rogard reached out, trying to
break the Barrier, clawing at MIKILLATI. "Can't you see, none of us can
win, it's death for us all if the war ends. Call her back!" (PAWN, page
68). And of course MIKILLATI ignored Rogard. But I would not go as far
as Rogard did and say the computers died after they were switched off
when Black was checkmated--they lapsed into a kind of dreamless sleep
from which they would eventually be awakened, to fight again.
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