Parallels and Paradoxes

In the Introduction by fictitious Robin Orrin, we look back on the events to be described in Hence: A Meditation in Voices. This novel, supposedly written by the equally fictitious Garner Briggs in 1997 but actually by Brad Leithauser in 1989, provides a mid-21st century perspective. Some ecological disaster, called The Shift, has occurred in the interim. The chess match between Timothy Briggs, Garner's younger brother, and the computer program ANNDY is already history, having taken place in 1993.

The reader may find the Introduction and Chapters One through Five difficult because they are written in the first person, by Robin Orrin and Garner Briggs respectively. Both men are so pompous and self-important that their writing is "too clever by half". It is only in Chapter Six, after Garner Briggs has bid belated farewell to the reader, that the third person narrative begins and the pace of the novel picks up.

This is a book about paradoxes. The central paradox in Hence is that, in the battle of man versus machine, mankind's representative is the unlikely Timothy Briggs. He is twenty-one years old - a Columbia University drop-out, hailing originally from Victoria, Indiana. Timothy wears dungarees and athletic shoes, and he is unsophisticated in the ways of the business world. Yet, a former Junior National Champion, he is totally devoted to chess. Despite all his shortcomings by society's standards, Timothy is the only character in this novel who is truly human, and by definition imperfect. All the others have already been defeated by the machine, in the sense that corporate America has swallowed them up. Timmy is an identical twin, but his twin brother Tommy died at age six after falling from a slide in the school playground. Much of Timothy's eccentric behavior can be explained, in Freudian terms, as an attempt to be reunited with his dead brother.

The author draws a parallel between Timothy and ANNDY, as though the computer program were the lost twin trying to come back to life. Late in Hence, the two surviving Briggs boys, Garner and Timothy, revisit the playground where Tommy's fatal accident took place. The author draws another parallel between Timothy's hometown of Victoria and Vicky Schmidt, an employee of Congam, the computer manufacturing conglomerate that is sponsoring the Briggs-ANNDY match for $20,000. Timothy meets her in a Boston bar on the eve of the match, to be held at MIT. He immediately becomes infatuated with the girl, who is a few years older than he is.

Without revealing who wins the match, I will tell you that after six games the score is tied, with each opponent having a 2-2-2 record. By the time the match concludes, the result is anticlimactic. What matters is that Timothy has become a celebrity whose face is recognizable on TV screens throughout America.

However, this is more than just another book about chess. As mentioned earlier, there are both paradoxes and parallels, and philosophical overtones as well. At one point, Garner Briggs - a self-styled philosopher - considers the paradox of the first unmanned landing on Mars. Prior to that historic event, mankind held many romanticized notions concerning life on the "red planet". But the machine that soft-landed there shattered those illusions, once and for all. Similarly, Garner suggests that when a computer finally out-thinks a man, the machine will have shattered our illusions about life on planet Earth. Perhaps this explains why an article by Brad Leithauser on the Kasparov-Deep Thought match appeared last year* in The New York Times Sunday magazine.

This book is available in paperback or hardcover. I recommend that you add this thought-provoking novel to your chess library.

*{This book review originally appeared in Atlantic Chess News in 1991}