[jbperry]

As formulaic as some series are, I wonder how long it will be until a best seller is "written" by a program?

[scrumper]

"The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed," written in 1983 by a program named Racter. Bestseller? It's very well known, but I don't know how well it sold.

[bcoates]

Racter was more of a William S. Burroughs cut-up program, it mostly randomizes and regurgitates it's input. Policeman's Beard required carefully selected input and is on the border of being a hoax.

[scrumper]

Huh, did not know that - thanks. Interesting.

[derleth]

> "The Policeman's Beard" Was Largely Prefab!

http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/racterfaq.html

This is an interesting web page that convincingly makes the case that "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed" was written largely by the humans involved, with the program having a minimal role, and that the Racter program they sold to the public was incapable of reproducing the novel.

[robflynn]

Your comment reminded me of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Plagiarist-ebook/dp/B004ZUZT5W

[modarts]

I guess this is the physical manifestation of the "million monkeys on a typewriter" thought experiment.

[alanh]

It made me think of Sarte’s infinite library, but the reality of these books looks nothing like either.

[czr80]

Borges, not Sarte.

[derleth]

"The Library of Babel", by Borges

> "The Library of Babel" (Spanish: La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

[jacquesm]

This is more like what I'd expect from a next generation search engine than from a book.

[bennyg]

Sounds like a human-guided genetic algorithm might be able to handle this today.