In the Technic History:
(i) human explorers play chess on Lucifer in "The Problem of Pain";
(ii) Max Abrams and Runei the Wanderer play chess in Ensign Flandry;
(iii) a consciousness-level computer plays chess with itself in A Circus Of Hells;
(iv) Dominic Flandry and Ydwyr the Seeker play chess also in A Circus Of Hells;
(v) men on Unan Besar play chess in "A Plague of Masters";
(vi) Flandry and Catherine Kittredge play chess in "Hunters of the Sky Cave";
(vii) Flandry compares life to chess in The Game Of Empire;
(viii) Tabitha Falkayn tells Philippe Rochefort that several Avalonian Ythrians would play chess with him in The People Of The Wind;
(ix) I thought that, in "Hunters of the Sky Cave," chess was played on a twenty meter square chess board with live girls but it is Go, not chess.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks for referring to my latest article, "Andersonian Chess." And I completely missed what you mentioned in your point "ix"! What I recall about the bit you cited from WE CLAIM THESE STARS was that the girls playing as pieces in a game of Go seemed to work for one of the more expensive brothels on Terra, one with high brow tastes! (Smiles)
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I've been forgetting to ask, have you ever read "The Immortal Game" I don't recall you ever commenting about that early story by Anderson. "Immortal" does show, if not human women, self aware and conscious computers acting as chessmen in a chess game.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Correction, I googled the blog and rediscovered how you DID comment about "The Immortal Game."
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
For the first time ever, I had a DREAM about Dominic Flandry! He was traveling by starliner (probably to Terra) carrying highly classified material when a gang of hostile enemy agents seized the ship. Who then rounded up the passengers and crew and demanded that Flandry reveal himself and turn over that material. After a pause the baddies selected someone to kill, at which Flandry stood up and asked to speak. He talked about many things, trying to drag out matters, looking for an opportunity to act. One of those things mentioned being how Emperor Georgios was a keen chess player, and had even invented an opening or gambit (perhaps). The door then opened and Flandry seized the chance to dash out and start creating mayhem for his foes!
Since my dream mentioned old Emperor Georgios, I thought (after awaking, that this could have happened after Flandry left the planet Ysabeau, mentioned at the every end of A CIRCUS OF HELLS). And was Emperor Georgios a chess player in "reality"?
I thought it very interesting to have dreamed about anything from or related to the works of Anderson. Including even a mention of chess!
Sean
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