Alien Snow: A Tour of Checkerboard Worlds
Clifford A Pickover · 2001
Abstract So begins a science-fiction saga that describes humanity’s first encounter with ephemeral entities resembling points of light on a 3-dimensional checkerboard—lights that move and change shapes according to mathematical laws. Some readers will recognize the cloud as a 3-dimensional cellular automaton. The theme saturates Ox, even to the point where each chapter begins with a small cellular grid decorated by dots. The presence or absence of a dot in a grid cell indicates which of 2 states a cell is in (that is, the cell is either on or off).