Amazon.com: The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed: Racter: Books

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

not actually written by a computer, December 4, 2005

By	Gertude Whitman (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This book is quite amusing, and is definitely worth a read. However, be aware that the text has been extensively "massaged" by human authors, and the original computer program, RACTER, that was used to produce it, required a great deal of human intervention to generate the text. It really is not a book "written by a computer," but rather an amusing example of using a computer to help generate text. In particular, the wacky associative "voice" of the book is really attributable to the humans behind the text. This can be confirmed by googling for RACTER or the book title, which has been extensively discussed on comp.ai.

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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Fascinating, Captain., January 12, 1999

By	Robert Carlberg (Seattle) - See all my reviews

The "first book written by a computer" won't win any awards for insight or style, but it certainly will make you smile.

Racter seems to have a predilection for lettuce, and for using a plethora of florid adjectives. Some of the jumps in logic (or are they disconnected ideas jammed together?) will have you scratching your head. His poetry is startling and full of gunshots of imagination. But don't blame him -- it's the way he was programmed.

Even so, Racter may make more sense than "Finnegans Wake"....

Computer-authored books and computer-composed music are in their infancy, but you can be sure there will be more (and better) to come.

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