Some times the Internet is like an unending river of chaos that just keeps washing all kinds of wild flotsam up on your shores.
How is it possible that in the space of 20 minutes I get pointed to all three of these things?
- Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-Catcher After 25 Years’ Experience – A book from the end of the 19th century. I can’t really add anything to the title. You need to go see it for yourself.
- Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson. This story won the Hugo for Best Short Story in 1983. I remember borrowing a collection of which this was the title story from the public library as a kid–although honestly the story “God Is An Iron” made a more lasting impression. (It was the title story in the more recent collection, so it probably wasn’t just me.)
- Theory Of Self-Reproducing Automata by John Von Neumann. If you’ve ever messed around with Life, you have some idea about cellular automata even if you don’t know it.
