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Document Type

Article

Abstract

Games are frequently used in speculative literature as a metaphor for real-world activities. In Trouble on Triton, Samuel Delany uses several sorts of games in order to explore complex systems of modeling and interrelationships between fiction and reality, extending a tradition in science fiction of placing games at the very center of social reality. Zaldivar's essay seeks to define some of the concepts of game theory that can be used to understand this complex novel and its representation of human social life. In particular, Zaldivar explores "finite" and "infinite" games and their uses within a deconstructive theoretical framework. A "finite" game is also a "zero-sum" game; its goal is to attain the end of the game by defeat of the opponent. An "infinite" game, on the other hand, has no pre-defined end in the game system. Instead, the goal of these games is to be the last one still playing. Filtering these concepts through Jacques Derrida's notion of "play," Zaldivar explores ways that this "opens up" the novel as a field for play. Trouble on Triton uses the image of a war and a fantasy-based game to explore interrelationships between real world infinite games and other modes of representation. The text itself becomes another sort of infinite game, wherein the reader and writer are implicated as players, and the ideas become the playing field for social, sexual, and textual change. Zaldivar explores ways that Delany uses his concept of a "modular calculus" to explore ways that a fictional text can have real-world implications on the readership and the ways in which games act as metaphors for our future and our everyday lives.

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