Collected Works of Poe vol. 3

"Automaton does not win every time. If the machine were a mere machine, this would not be the case, it would always win. Once the principle that enables a machine to play chess is discovered, the development of the same principle will enable it to win the game, and further development will ensure that it wins all games, that is, whoever comes up against it. On reflection, it's easy to see that the difficulty of making a machine that will win every game is, in principle, no more than making a machine that will win a single game. It doesn't seem to be within the scope of the article); furthermore, such an assumption becomes all the more absurd when you consider that missing the machine would be an argument that could be used against the possibility that it was a mere machine, just as we are now arguing." Maelzel's Chess Player Edgar Allan Poe, who has predicted many paths of Western thought in the next century, has been a source of discussion and inspiration for many writers and thinkers from Baudelaire to Benjamin, is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive and mysterious creators in the history of literature. Bringing together the essential prose of Poe, from his short stories to satires and satires, these three volumes are a critical edition, unlike the Poe translations published so far.