When HARLIE Was One

Gerrold, David (pseud. of Jerrold David Friedman). When HARLIE Was One (with "HARLIE" variously handled). New York: Ballantine, 1972. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, n.d. [S. F.] Book Club Edition. For translations, reprints, and other bibliographical information, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of April 2023, here.[1]

HARLIE is a young, precocious, godlike computer who is very good at games. At the end of WHWO, HARLIE has taken over a major socioeconomic game and has "the capacity to take over all the rest of the games"—that is, human "civilization, culture, society." See copyright page of Doubleday edn. for other HARLIE stories.

Wikipedia entry notes that "When HARLIE Was One contains one of the first fictional representations of a computer virus (preceded by Gregory Benford in 1970), and one of the first uses of the term 'virus' to describe a program that infects another computer.[2]

RDE, initial; finishing 12Ap23