Take a moment away from your computer screen, and give some
props to Alan Turing, the code-breaking badass who helped make all this
possible. Turing has captured our imagination several times, in books and movies.
Here’s our potted history of the Father of Computer Science in pop culture.
Sure, Turing hasn’t exactly scored the same levels of
exposure as Nikola
Tesla and other historical greats. But he turns up more often than you’d
think. Here are all the appearances of Turing we could find:
https://gizmodo.com/10-historical-figures-were-sick-of-seeing-in-science-f-1450157754
The Imitation Game
Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat — the
above image is from a
brand new movie in which Benedict Cumberbatch, fresh off playing Julian
Assange, is portraying the mathematician, alongside Keira Knightley, Matthew
Goode, Mark Strong, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, Allen Leech and Matthew Beard.
[Picture via Buzzfeed]
The movie is based on Andrew Hodges’ book Alan
Turing: The Enigma, and IMDB says it comes out in 2014. [Update: Apparently Hodges himself has seen the script and has publicly criticized it for downplaying Turing’s homosexuality and making Turing’s brief engagement to a woman into a real relationship, rather than an attempt at living a lie.]
Here’s another
picture, for your delectation:
Virtual Girl by Amy
Thompson
This fantastic
novel about artificial intelligence — still one of the best A.I. novels,
even after 20 years — includes an A.I. named Turing, who lives inside a
library computer. And one of the novel’s lovely moments happens when Turing,
the A.I., succeeds in passing the Turing Test — convincing someone that it’s
human.
Cryptonomicon by Neal
Stephenson
Stephenson’s novel
includes several real-life characters, but Turing gets a pretty prominent
placement, being treated “like a deity, having mythological significance
because of the impact his work has had on modern computer science,” as the
American Mathematical Society wrote when the book
came out. We witness
first-hand Turing’s attempts to create a primitive computer, to decipher
Nazi messages, and Turing’s idea of “computable” numbers is important.
When Stephenson’s character Waterhouse goes for a walk, he muses that “the
ocean is a Turing machine.”
Neuromancer by
William Gibson
The cyber-police in this
novel are the Turing Registry Agents. Also in Idoru, there’s a discussion of the Turing Test, and whether
“sentience” is something to do with embodiment or density of
information.
Turing’s Delirium by
Edmundo Paz Soldan
This acclaimed
Bolivian cyberpunk thriller follows Miguel “Turing” Saenz, a
code-breaker who works for a secret government organization called the Black
Chamber. He’s up against a “cyberhacktivist” who plots revolution.
The first sentence goes, “As soon as you turn your back on the uncertain
sunrise and enter your office building, you cease to be Miguel Sáenz, the civil
servant discernible behind the wrinkled gray suit, round, wire-rimmed glasses,
and fearful gaze, and become Turing, decipherer of secrets, relentless pursuer
of encoded messages, the pride of the Black Chamber.”
Turing: A Novel About
Computation by Christos H. Papadimitrou
Published by MIT Press, so you know it’s legit. Apparently
the hero of this
novel is “Turing, an interactive tutoring program and namesake (or
virtual emanation?) of Alan Turing, World War II code breaker and father of
computer science.”
Doctor Who, “The
Curse of Fenric”
One of the many thrills of the penultimate O.G. Doctor Who story is its cracked-mirror
version of Turing, Dr. Judson — a disabled cryptographer who incidentally
sidelines in translating some dangerous Viking runes that should have been left
alone. [Update: And Turing also is a major character in the Doctor Who novel, The Turing Test. Thanks, David Ennis!]
Incidentally, one of the three Turing machines in existence was stolen
by someone who called himself the Master, who left coded messages for the
police.
Alan Turing Monopoly
Turing was a huge fan of Monopoly, so it’s fitting that now you can play a version of this classic board game based on his life.
https://gizmodo.com/new-monopoly-board-is-based-on-the-life-of-alan-turing-5941661
Luck and Death at the
End of the World by Nas Hedron
This cyberpunk
novel includes a super-powerful A.I. that’s taken on the guise of Turing,
and guards some massively important secrets. Read some
sample chapters here.
Turing &
Burroughs: a Beatnik SF Novel by Rudy Rucker
Rucker goes alt-history in this
preternaturally loopy book. Quoting from the cover blurb: “What if
Alan Turing, founder of the modern computer age, escaped assassination by the
secret service to become the lover of Beat author William Burroughs? What if
they mutated into giant shapeshifting slugs, fled the FBI, raised Burroughs’s
wife from the dead, and tweaked the H-bombs of Los Alamos?”
Tangents by Greg Bear
A researcher into multi-dimension theory, Peter Tuthy, flees
persecution as a homosexual in the U.K.,
coming to the U.S.
And the
award-winning story draws parallels and connections between Tuthy and
Turing, who was also persecuted for his sexuality.
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
In Stross’ Laundryverse novels, Turing “manages to independently discover the math behind the Necronomicon, is
subsequently murdered by the British occult secret service for said
discovery (covered up as a suicide, of course), and is the father of
modern computation demonology in addition to computing,” as Otagian says. (Thanks to everyone who reminded us of this one!)
A Madman Dreams of
Turing Machines by Janna Levin
In this
novel, a mysterious narrator intertwines the lives of Kurt Gödel and
Turing, showing how their illustrious careers and tragic ends mirror each
other.
Codebreaker
Totally missed this one for some reason — thanks to Katje for pointing it up! A 2011 BBC documentary/dramatization in which Ed Stoppard plays Turing.
Atomic Robo
This comic includes an evil A.I. named ALAN who takes on the form of its creator, Alan Turing. (Thanks, Jake Hawken!)
The Imitation Game by
Ian McEwan
This 1980 short
play features a cryptographer named Tanner who mentors a young woman who’s
recruited into the Women’s Royal Navy — and McEwan said that he wanted to
write a play about Turing, but decided to fictionalize instead.
Enigma by Robert
Harris
This novel,
adapted into a movie script by Tom Stoppard, follows Turing’s cryptographic
team as they race against time to break the toughest Nazi cipher — although
the main character is another cryptographer, Tom Jericho. As Imitation Game writer Graham Moore
explains here,
“Though clearly inspired by Turing, Jericho
is straight, and in fact the love triangle in which he finds himself ends up
changing the course of the war. In a
sense, we find here an imagined version of Turing’s real-life relationship with
his fellow codebreaker Joan Clarke, to whom Turing was briefly engaged in 1941.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23yie-779k
Breaking the Code
And last but definitely not least, there’s Hugh Whitemore’s
fantastic play, which was adapted for television starring Derek Jacobi — the
whole thing is right here, and it’s an absolute must watch. Just be prepared to
have your heart shredded.
And let’s give the last word to Moore himself, whose Imitation Game screenplay topped the Blacklist
of the best unproduced scripts: “as Turing’s legacy lives on, so should
his legend.”
Sources: Nassauhedron,
BBC
