Z-Machine Matter

It's hard to believe that Douglas Adams' classic comedy / sci-fi novel is thirty years old.  It's hard to believe because it's not true.  The novel is well on thirty-five years old, the original BBC radio broadcast is a year older at thirty-six, the TV adaptation is twenty-six and the film is just a wee nine year-old.  However, the Infocom game of the same name will be turning thirty on March 8th, so we may as well celebrate that. It's a nice round number, and I like round numbers.

Adams was a fan of technology, computers, games and procrastination.  So what better medium for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than an interactive fiction version from Infocom?  

The project was co-authored by Steve Meretzky (above right) who wrote all of the program code as well as significant chunks of the prose, presumably while Adams was busy procrastinating on other projects.  Adams penchant for putting off projects has been well documented over the years and the game's development is  given a detailed treatment by IF historian and game author Jimmy Maher.  

Adams subsequently kicked off work on the game Bureaucracy, though he later lost interest and the game went through many co-authors over three years and was eventually published in 1987.  Following this, there were some ill-fated attempts to create a sequel game Milliways: Restaurant at the End of the Universe which was to be written by author Michael Bywater, who had worked on Bureaucracy. Alas, nothing came of these efforts except some rough prototypes, heated emails and plenty of bruised egos.  

BBC Radio 4  has released an updated online version of the game for the thirtieth anniversary with a fun graphical interface.  You can find it on the BBC site. They will also be re-broadcasting the original radio series. 

If you've got a copy of the old Z5 file you can play it with the Frotz interpreter or equivalent on just about any platform around including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. Be warned though, it's a fun game, but remarkebly tough. It's virtually impossible to get through without a walkthrough.

Update: I have updated the links in this story

• BBC: Radio 4 program, 30th Anniversary game, Interview w/Steve Meretzky
• iTunes: Lost Treasures of Infocom, Frotz
• Infocom Gallery: Main Site, Grey Boxes, Hitchhiker's Guide
• Wikipedia: Infocom, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Game)
  

The wild and crazy guys over at S&T Geotronics, James Sanderson and Marc Tessier, have decided to go full tilt with a Kickstarter version of their DIY Open Enigma Project.  For those who missed the fanfare last year, they were featured on Instructables showing how to build an Arduino-based encryption machine that works exactly like a WWII era Enigma.  You know, the thing that Alan friggin' Turing and his team at Bletchley Park cracked to  bring an end to WWII?  Yeah, that Enigma.  

The Enigma was also featured in the aptly-titled novel "Enigma" by Robert Harris and the film starring Kate Winslet and some people I've never heard of.  That film was produced by Mick "code-breaker" Jagger.  Yeah, that Mick Jagger... By the way, Jagger owns his own personal friggin' Enigma machine.  How cool is that?  

The Enigma Machine (and it's cracking) remains one of the most significant breakthroughs in computing.  And Turing is considered one of the fathers of modern computing as well as a brilliant mathematician, logician, code-breaker and... wait for it.... world class marathon runner. (I kid you not, the guy ran a 2:46 marathon, coming in 5th in an Olympic qualifying round.  Take that Nazi scum!)

But unless you happen to have a spare $208,137 lying around to throw at a Christie's auction, the closest you're ever gonna get to an Enigma machine is to view Mick Jagger's Enigma sealed behind glass at Bletchley Park.  I've been there, it's fantastic.  But it's also heavily guarded.  Just sayin'. 

Now with the Open Enigma Project, you can get a working, life-size replica of the Enigma and be a part of computing history.  You can sponsor the Kickstarter project for as little as $5 (cheapskate), or if you're a DIY hardware hacker, for $250 you get a bag of electronic stuff you can assemble.  

Or if you're a software person who wouldn't know which way to plug in a soldering iron, then you can get a fully assembled kit (without a case) for $300.  And if you want the whole enchilada including the genuine wooden case, it's $600.  Executives, VCs, rock stars and others can splurge for even higher levels to help make this project a reality. 

This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a working Enigma replica.  And that is some cool cyber-encrypting steampunk goodness!  You can plug the Open Enigma into your PC via USB port and run some kind of crazy distributed big data bitcoin-mining NoSQL social media photo sharing site on it.  

All the hardware and software is open source so you can compute all you want on your desk, put it behind glass or run a marathon with it.  Just like Alan Turing would have done.

• Kickstarter: Open Enigma Project
• Wikipedia: Enigma, Alan friggin' Turing, Bletchley Park
• Amazon: Enigma (DVD), Enigma (Bookie wook)
• Instructables: Make your own Enigma replica