Stephen Wolfram's new theory of everything has a poetic precursor-- M. A. Foster's novel The Gameplayers of Zan (DAW Books, Inc., April 1977).

The epigraph to Chapter Four:

The more dimensions in a Game, the more complex become the factors in the surround that influence the state of a given cell.  This becomes significant when we recall that only two things determine what a cell's state will be:  what it was in the last temporal frame, and what the surround is.  Now if we imagine that our familiar universe of three dimensions is instead a three-dimensional projection of an n-dimensional Game, then the task before us of first importance is to determine the dimensional matrix.  Is this not obvious?

From page 370:

"The kind of space that the ship perceives, operates in, is to creatures such as you and I, chaotic, meaningless, and dangerous, when perceived directly, if we can at all. To confront it directly is destructive to the primate mind, indeed the whole vertebrate nervous system.... Basic to the universe: that its inmost reality cannot be perceived. A limit. So we interpose a symbolizer, and that translates the view into something we can perceive, and control...."

"...I see; the symbolizer portrays a Game.... When one flies the Ship, one is actually playing a... Game, in which space itself plays the role of antagonist."

From page 371:

"The Game in the Ship cannot be approached as a job, a vocation, a career, or a recreation. To the contrary, it is Life and Death itself at work there. In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur, the Mind of God. And that Mind is a terrible mind, that one may not face directly and remain whole. Some of the forerunners guessed it long ago -- first the Hebrews far back in time, others along the way, and they wisely left it alone, left the Arcana alone. That is why those who studied the occult arts were either fools or doomed. Fools if they were wrong, and most were; doomed if right. The forerunners know, and stay away."

June 12, 2002 shc759