Sarah Cliston, David M. Berry, Anthony C. Hay, Mark C. Marino, Peter Millican, Arthur I. Schwarz, Jeff Shrager, and Peggy Weil. Inventing Eliza. The MIT Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0-262-05248-1.

Society has lost many valuable pieces of computer history. Digital media fails, websites go offline, and personal memories fade. Remembering or reconstructing the early stages of digital computing in the 1950s and 1960s is particularly difficult.

In Inventing ELIZA from The MIT Press, a team of eight authors created a valuable multi-lens analysis of the now-famous program ELIZA. The program, which was technically the ELIZA script running within the DOCTOR framework, simulated human nature and maintained a conversation by adopting the approach of a Rogerian psychotherapist. The source code of later versions of the program written in BASIC and other languages were available, but the code behind the original 1965 version of ELIZA had been lost.

ArnoldReinhold, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to good luck during an archival search, a printout of the original MAD-SLIP code was found, allowing the author team to dig into the code and its implications. After an insightful introduction by Janet H. Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, the team starts their analysis with a biography of ELIZA’s developer Joseph Weizenbaum. Weizenbaum escaped from Germany in the 1930s, eventually ending up at MIT in 1963. His previous work on the Symmetric List Processor (SLIP) programming language offered the ability to manage text in ways not easily done before. Weizenbaum used those capabilities to create ELIZA.

After the biography, the authors devote a chapter to a close reading of the ELIZA code. And by “close reading” I mean a block-by-block, and in some cases line-by-line, interpretation of the code. I’m a scrappy coder at best and have never worked in the FORTRAN-based SLIP, which was overtaken by LISP for this type of work, but SLIP offered some distinct advantages contemporary programmers take as given. First, the MAD-SLIP language could handle text as symbols. Second, the language could dynamically allocate resources at runtime. MAD-SLIP also had double-linked lists, which meant that not only was there a memory pointer to the next item in the list, there was also a pointer to the previous item. Perhaps most importantly, dynamic allocation meant lists could contain other lists—most languages did not permit this type of recursion.

Throw in ridiculously small memory and storage capacity for programs entered using punch cards and it’s a miracle anything of substance got done at all.

ArnoldReinhold, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

After the technical analysis, the authors turn to the implications of ELIZA on human-computer interaction at the time of its release, how the mores and attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s affected the program’s construction and interpretation, and how ELIZA and similar programs such as MrMind gave rise to the chatbots and Large Language Models (LLMs) in use today. LLMs such as ChatGPT provoke concern because their probabilistic text generation will inevitably lead to inaccuracies. LLMs don’t have built-in calculation engines so their performance on math problems is even more error-prone.

At a deeper level, the so-called ELIZA Effect, where humans anthropomorphized the computer and sought, in the broader sense, to offload decisions to the perceived impartiality of an algorithm. As Weizembaum wrote:

“Science promised [humans] power. But, as so often happens when people are seduced by promises of power, the price exacted in advance and all along the path, and the price actually paid, is servitude and impotence.” [Weizembaum, Computer Power and Human Reason, p. 227]

NW7US, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s humbling to realize the inventors of human-interactive text generation systems identified the power and danger inherent in those tools so soon after their creation.

Inventing ELIZA is a groundbreaking book that serves the fields of computing history, sociology, gender studies, and computer-human interaction in equal measure. I’m glad I read it and enthusiastically recommend it.

Scott DeJong and Marc Lajeunesse. Their System, Our Game. University of Michigan Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0472-04026-1.

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) let participants create a shared experience. The form of that experience depends on the group of players (the “table”) and, usually, a referee that guides the action. Rules systems and scenarios can range from highly detailed affairs to the bare minimum required for storytelling.

No system meets every player’s needs, so there is a rich history of modifications through house rules and third-party products. Scott DeJong and Marc Lajeunesse’s new book Their System, Our Game from the University of Michigan Press looks at this “home brew” tradition for Pathfinder, a TTRPG known to accommodate such changes.

The authors set a group of “brewers” who range from the purely amateur to hired third-party content creators for Paizo, Pathfinder's publisher. It’s interesting to read about the brewers's motivations and approaches and contrast them with my preferred puzzle-solving approach rather than character-based theatrical storytelling.

Skipping forward to near the end of the book, DeJong and Lajeunesse use improvisational comedy terms to describe the approach used in Pathfinder 2E (second edition). In improv, the key to effective scenework is the “yes, and” approach, where all players accept offers by other players and extend upon them creatively. For example, a scene start such as “I can’t believe we went fifteen hours without talking!” could be “yes anded” by saying “Yes, and I have never felt more ready to sing an opera.”

The authors characterize a system such as Dungeons & Dragons as a “No, and” system, where specific actions are not allowed but can be handled by the rules if certain compromises are made. “I can’t believe we went fifteen hours without talking!” could have the “no, and” response of “I talked whenever you were out of the room, and we should continue with that in mind.” By refusing, or “blocking” the first player’s offer, the second player has brought the scene to a grinding halt. Pathfinder 1E (first edition) is a step toward the preferred improv approach but remains a “yes, but” framework. In this case, a response to  “I can’t believe we went fifteen hours without talking!” could be “Yes, but I don’t feel any different than before.” The second player technically accepted the offer but then immediately undermined any sense of progress. In system terms, this framework says “Yes, you can do that, but here’s how it has to work.”

Pathfinder 2E’s simplified rules (there are fewer tables and much less math) means the game relies less on adjudication and more on storytelling, a perfect mix for both a “yes, and” technique and a home brew campaign. Fewer inherent restrictions allows freer gameplay, though the gamemaster has to manage game balance and storytelling against players affecting the story in unplanned ways.

DeJong and Lajeunesse mix theory, their own homebrew learning, and the experiences of their brewer cohort effectively. Combined with discussions of TTRPGs in general and homebrew traditions from Pathfinder and other frameworks, Their System, Our Game offers a powerful description and critique of roleplaying through the lens of independent play. Highly recommended.

Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0-691-27244-3.

In The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us from Princeton University Press, Benjamin Recht of UC Berkeley examines the history of computer-driven risk analysis from its foundations in World War II to the present day. Many of Dr. Recht’s themes are familiar, but he provides ample new (to me, at least) perspectives and examples to advance the discussion.

I particularly like his treatment of creating linear models, which have well-defined solutions, as a means of controlling physical systems. Another recent book from Princeton, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation (which I reviewed here) examines automation as applied to theme park ride control and optimization. Recht acknowledges the power of these systems but references a 1989 conference plenary address entitled “Respect the Unstable” by Gunter Stein, a Honeywell engineer, regarding the dangers of forcing linear control over nonlinear systems. Recht notes that Stein provided several examples of small perturbations that caused a nonlinear system controlled using a linear model to get dangerously out of control.

Other examples include gameplay for checkers, chess, go, and poker. These three games are perfect information games with enormous game trees, while poker has a huge game space that includes hidden information. As a risk analysis and optimization problem, it’s theoretically possible to describe the entire game tree of a perfect information game. That has been done for checkers, which was solved in 2007, but seems comfortably out of reach for chess and go.

It’s different for business problems. You can’t build a decision tree or evaluate simulation results without knowing the specific outcome of each play of the game. Defining player payoffs in all but the simplest cases is impossible, especially if you include non-monetary measures. To that end, Recht quotes RAND historian Robert Leonard:

Repeatedly, one encounters the opinion that, as far as systems analysis was concerned, the value of game theory at RAND was not in providing numerical solutions to particular strategic problems, but in providing qualitative insight, in stressing the important of reciprocation, opposing intentions, the credibility of threats, and the like. Game theory played a role in systems analysis, therefore, but not as a generator of numerical solutions to well-specified problems.

How, then, do humans make decisions? The Irrational Decision compares the competing theories of Daniel Kahneman of Thinking Fast and Slow fame, and Gary Klein, who wrote Sources of Power and Streetlights and Shadows. Kahneman focuses on heuristics and rules, while Klein created his Recognition-Primed Decision Making (RDM) model. Recht’s comparison of the two approaches and how the creators achieved a form of reconciliation was interesting to read and more information I hadn’t encountered previously.

The Irrational Game is an excellent book. Even if you’re familiar with the popular literature on decision-making you’ll likely find new information and fresh perspectives. Highly recommended.

Caitlin Rozakis, Startup Hell. Titan Books. 2026. ISBN13: 978-1-835-41586-3. $19.99.

Leave it to a professional marketer to tell us about the special kind of hell it is to work at a startup. Everyone does the job of at least three people, leadership pivots to different products on a whim, and some of your coworkers would sell their soul to cash out.

In Caitlin Rozakis’s new book Startup Hell, all of those things are literally true. The startup Zabloom (I mean, really?) pivots more often than a small-college basketball center and marketer Morgan Blackwater-McKey is caught in the middle. Then her supervisor dies while summoning a demon and things get worse. And worse. And worse.

Selling one’s soul to a demon for earthly benefit isn’t that uncommon in Morgan’s world. Her mother is a professional mystical ass-kicker with the scars to prove it, vampires run venture capital firms, and angels dispense justice while barely knowing why. Morgan has a magical disability similar to dyslexia that prevents her from using magic effectively, but she is familiar with the craft and knows how to manage herself when the sparks fly.

Rozakis deftly blends all-to-real details of startup life with a fun speculative world of demonic contracts. It turns out the price for earthly riches is somewhat less than eternal damnation but no less satisfying when the truly deserving pay the cost. Throw in a fun and funny romance with a handsome junior salesdemon trying to make his own quarterly targets and you’ve got yourself a winner.

Startup Hell tells a great story. More to the point for me, it asks what the infernal realm would do differently, if anything, from our terrestrial companies to demand top performance from their sales reps. There are a few uneven moments but they don’t detract from the overall experience. You’ll probably spot a dozen startup products that flamed out gloriously along with the personalities that tried to convince us we needed a marginal product built by people with no other goal than to cash out.

Highly recommended. 

J. Rey Lee, Unsettling Catan. University of Michigan Press. 2025. ISBN: 978-0-472-03998-2. $24.95.

Settlers of Catan, the classic boardgame by Klaus Teuber, has sold more than 40 million copies over various editions and expansions. Combining easy-to-learn rules, variable setup, and meaningful choices throughout the game, Catan was a breakthrough hit that put eurogames on the map outside of Europe.

As Professor J. Rey Lee notes in Unsettling Catan: Detached Design in Eurogames, Catan abstracts away elements of the game’s scenario relating to the territory and economic engines the players develop. Lee refers to this construction in both subtitle and text as detached design, which he sets in contrast to the overt conflict of wargames and many other boardgames.

Eurogame design philosophy centers on player choice in place of random success or failure of a selected action. In Catan and similar games the players are presented with options generated by card or tile draws, from which they chose an option. This input randomness happens near the start of the player’s turn, as opposed to output randomness where a player chooses an action and faces a die roll to determine success or failure near the end of their turn. Any gamer can tell you there’s nothing more nerve-wracking than rolling a twenty-sided die when you know you need an eighteen or higher to succeed. Moving the luck to the start of the turn and demanding a choice from options with known outcomes results in significant emotional detachment—the suspense is gone even though future turns and choices will ultimately decide the effect of your move.

The author argues that this detachment extends to the ideological framework of the game. Lee points out that Catan embodies colonialism, a claim readily supported by the word “settlers” in the game’s title and the lack of indigenous peoples explicitly benefitting from the players’ economic development. The game omits discussion of that framework, which isn’t surprising for a work created to entertain, but the themes are clear when exposed and have different meanings for western and non-western audiences.

Unsettling Catan is an excellent study that builds a substantive cultural critique from a touchstone in the boardgame world that extends to other eurogames and beyond. I benefitted from reading Professor Lee’s work and recommend Unsettling Catan without reservation.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Green City Wars. Tor Publishing Group. 2026. ISBN: 978-1-250-29033-5. $28.99.

I follow Adrian Tchaikovsky on Bluesky so I’d preordered Green City Wars months in advance. I’m certain I would have picked it up if I’d spotted it on the New Fiction table at Powell’s, though. The outstanding cover designed by Shreya Gupta and executed by Chris Koehler catches the eye immediately. Raccoon in a fedora moving in silhouette across a nighttime cityscape? Count me in.

Skotch, the raccoon in question, has augmented intelligence and physical skills. He received that treatment to make him one of the Little Helpers, the army of animals that do the grunt work of bussing tables, collecting trash, and maintaining the infrastructure of a near-future city Neuwien, the reconstituted Vienna, Austria. The Little Helpers are managed by Uzco and, as long as they remain in good standing they receive regular doses of Plangent. Going without means their intelligence swiftly disappears.

Not a good fit for the corporate life, Skotch has gone freelance as a private investigator. And with freelancing being what it is, he faces regular shortages of both buttons (currency) and Plangent. Those shortages give his former employer Uzco the leverage to convince our raccoon PI to find an augmented mouse.

In Neuwien, mice are at the bottom of the Little Helper social hierarchy and used as the baseline for Mausgelt, the number of buttons one must pay to wipe the slate clean after a death. A mouse is worth one Mausgelt, meaning that if you kill a mouse you can pay one button to have the offended party, whether family, clan, or corporation, set the matter aside. The mouse in question is special, of course, and multiple parties want to lay their paws on him. Skotch’s job is to manage those opposing forces while saving the mouse and his own pelt.

Tchaikovsky builds an intriguing world with sly references to Flowers for Algernon, dramas such as Downton Abbey and Upstairs/Downstairs, and science fiction classics from the 1970s that I don’t want to spoil for you. His commentary on the plight of the serving class through the lens of animals as Little Helpers cuts neatly into contemporary society and critiques the assumptions and goals of technology leaders.

And did I mention Skotch’s investigations begin as red and gray squirrels are about to renew large-scale hostilities?

I loved Green City Wars and recommend it without reservation.