The Imitation Game

Thanks for the comments and kind words, everyone! A few specifics…
greytfriend and SamanthaH: Thanks for getting this on to Goodreads.
BopPunkGreg: You caught two typos. (I knew about the “imput” one earlier…but not early enough. Argh.) Thanks…we’ll correct those. If people find more, please let us know. Gorgeous Gary: I hope you do make it out to Bletchley Park. It’s worth the trip. And all who’ve asked about a print edition: We’re working on that right now, and when there’s news to share we will do so! Again, thanks everybody.

Prof. Bennett,

Thank you for the note, and I’m glad you enjoyed the book, at least for the most part.

I wrote the script between 2007 and 2009, with some additional reshaping done through 2011. At the time, B. Jack Copeland’s book TURING, the documentation he uncovered, and his conclusions about the cause of Turing’s death — that “[t]he exact circumstances…may always remain unclear” — had not appeared. So, like most before me, I took the coroner’s report as a given.

I’ll note that an earlier draft of our story, though not so early that Leland didn’t draw it, was much more ambiguous. Page 193 originally left what Turing did (or didn’t do) to the apple open to interpretation. That may be more appropriate in light of Copeland’s reasoning, but I haven’t decided whether returning to that more ambiguous depiction is best. I still prefer that earlier version, which is why I wrote it that way, but in addition to being confusing it muted both the injustice Turing suffered at the hands of the state and his own agency. (As you noted.) And to the limited extent that I was able to get inside Turing’s head in the course of writing the book, I still find the notion of a decisive act by Turing himself as plausible as accidental inhalation.

Regardless, your point is a good one, and I’m including a discussion about this in the notes and reference section that will appear in any future presentations of the book. So thank you again for pointing it out, and thank you again for your compliments and comments.

Hi Dondo! Thanks for these.

Additional typo noted and will be fixed (the one on page 40 is already taken care of, thanks to BopPunkGreg’s earlier comment).

As for the price of beer, I should have guessed that there were good records for this. Germans and beer, after all. I don’t think I specified a price in the script, and it never occured to me to check what Leland chose. So, noted… But!…I think I may leave that as-is, since our sign could be read to indicate that the quoted 1RM is for three steins, in which case they’re getting a discount. Or, conversely, it’s not hard to imagine that Turing and his friends got the special (read: inflated) tourist price! :)

J. Holder: You’re welcome, and thank you, in return. It’s always good to learn new stuff, and I’m grateful that people care enough about the story to take the time to comment and share their knowledge! Also, thank you for your review at Sequart Organization, which I was just alerted to: http://sequart.org/magazine/46882/alan-turing-in-context/ . Regarding it, I confess that I wasn’t aware that beginning with the mother’s version is a cliche in gay narrative, as I’m not well-versed in that literature. I chose to open the story the way you see it because Turing’s mother wrote a book that paints an excellent portrait of her son in many ways. (The book is titled “Alan M. Turing”, and was long out of print when I wrote the story and difficult to find outside of academic libraries; I’m lucky to work in a good one! It’s now available again in a centenary edition, and well worth reading both for the original text and the newly available essay by Turing’s older brother.) Again, it’s an excellent portrait…except it says nothing at all about her son’s sexuality or the arrest, and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface about his work at Bletchley Park. The latter is understandable, but the former makes her the perfect first participant in the Imitation Game that is the framework for our story. She’s no better than the rest of the people he questions at answering the question “Who is Alan Turing?”

Catherine: Thanks for the kind words, and your description of the cuff-turning is wonderful. I can picture the guide doing that, and it’s a great bit of theater. I’ve added a note about this to the footnotes that will appear in the — fingers crossed! — print edition. That’s where all the other corrections people have helped out with will appear, by the way. (Asking the folks at Tor to swap out pages as I fix them would be too much of an imposition, so Leland and I will have to live with our typos being there for all to see for now.)

As to frustration at the wrong done to Turing, where to begin… With Turing himself, and the years lost from a life well-lived and enjoyed? With his family and friends, who lost a loved one? Or with the world, which lost the new insights his amazing intellect would have produced? Like another of my heroes, Richard Feynman, Turing was “no ordinary genius”, so we can’t even guess what he might have done with five, ten, twenty, or more years. All I’m sure of is that we’d be better off if he…and we…could have lived them.

Hi Everybody,

A quick update to let you know that we can now confirm a print edition. The contracts are signed and we’re excited to work with the excellent folks at Abrams ComicArts on an expanded version of the story. Leland and I have already well into the work on it (I’ve finished the scripting and he’s done thumbnails of the new scenes), and if all goes to plan you’ll see it for sale in 2016.

Thanks to all — especially Tor — for the support so far!

Jim