SF Review: Koichi Harukure "Mortal Game"
A short story in SF Magazine Aug 2022 Koichi Harukure “Mortal Game” The Search for Interstellar Life project has discovered an organic cellular automaton. The rules are deterministic, and calculations show that all “cells” will disappear in the near future. Cellular automata are life-like if they are self-replicators that spontaneously reproduce from their environment, whereas a phenomenon whose behavior can be computed deterministically cannot be treated as life. Should we leave the automaton untouched and let it “go extinct” in order not to disturb its natural environment, or should we “breed” it and modify the rules to foster long-period patterns?...