John Williams wrote:
> David Hobby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...
>> It could be that The Atrocity Archives is best
>> appreciated if you know a lot of theoretical computer
>> science, so I'll withhold comment.
>
> Did Stross come from a CS background? When you say theoretical
> computer science, do you mean something like Knuth or Sedgewick?
> Or further back, like von Neumann?
John--
I guess I'd say "like Karp". The books are set in a
universe(?) where P equals NP. Once one has a polynomial-
time algorithm for doing NP-complete problems, Computational
Demonology becomes feasible... : )
He has a few other stories where P equals NP. One of
those is "Antibodies", which appears in _Toast, and other
rusted futures_. Apparently the standard behavior for
AIs that get a bit above human level in intelligence is
to promptly rush to transcendence, eventually hacking
the computational substrate of the universe itself.
Finding how to do NP-complete problems in polynomial
time is one of their first steps along the way...
---David
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
