Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)
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The Game's Afoot: Images of Infinite Games in Samuel Delany's Trouble on Triton / Marc Zaldivar
Abstract: Games are frequently used in speculative literature as a metaphor for real-world activities. In Trouble on Triton, Samuel Delany uses several sorts of games in order to explore complex systems of modeling and interrelationships between fiction and reality, extending a tradition in science fiction of placing games at the very center of social reality. Zaldivar's essay seeks to define some of the concepts of game theory that can be used to understand this complex novel and its representation of human social life. In particular, Zaldivar explores "finite" and "infinite" games and their uses within a deconstructive theoretical framework. A "finite" game is also a "zero-sum" game; its goal is to attain the end of the game by defeat of the opponent. An "infinite" game, on the other hand, has no pre-defined end in the game system. Instead, the goal of these games is to be the last one still playing. Filtering these concepts through Jacques Derrida's notion of "play," Zaldivar explores ways that this "opens up" the novel as a field for play. Trouble on Triton uses the image of a war and a fantasy-based game to explore interrelationships between real world infinite games and other modes of representation. The text itself becomes another sort of infinite game, wherein the reader and writer are implicated as players, and the ideas become the playing field for social, sexual, and textual change. Zaldivar explores ways that Delany uses his concept of a "modular calculus" to explore ways that a fictional text can have real-world implications on the readership and the ways in which games act as metaphors for our future and our everyday lives.
<1> Game theory is an old field, long focused on questions of permutation and combination. Philosophers from as long ago as Plato have dealt with its polemics. Only relatively recently, however, has game theory been applied to fields outside of mathematical philosophy, such as politics, sociology, psychology, and, of course, literature. Most commonly, utopian and dystopian speculations have been the focus of game theory in literature. For example, Michael Holquist notes that "Utopia has in common with chess first of all the general characteristic that it is a simplification, a radical stylization of something in which experience is of enormous complexity, often lacking any apparent symmetry. Chess substitutes for war, utopia for society" (Holquist 110). This suggests that utopia, in particular, and literature, in general, is a system of simplified representation, or a method to "cut away" and to limit the complexity of reality through the use of metaphor and metonymy to get to a closely defined source of speculation, a sort of field of play.
<2> Jacques Derrida, in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences," also comments on this limiting system of signification. For him, any cohesive system sets up a trace of a signified in the center as a goal, as a way to win the game, but that signified can never be regained, and the game can never really be won. What is more significant, for him, is what he calls "freeplay," or the movement of the elements within the system itself. This, in terms of game theory, is the difference between a finite and an infinite game. Finite games are played to be won; they are indeed simplified representations, in that they have a definite boundary drawn to define when victory has been achieved. In contrast, infinite games are played solely to continue the game; this is more along the lines of a Derridean notion of the system: the infinite game is the eternal quest for the elusive signified. That quest is one played out in many pieces of literature.
<3> The notion of games in literature is, of course, a noble tradition. Games have played a significant role in other science fiction novels, and in ways that interestingly complicate this reading of Delany's novel (this is a little slip – you've yet to mention Delany). For instance, in Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game (make sure to include in bibliography), the young Ender is given a fantasy game to play in his spare time, seemingly for entertainment. The game is meant to be a monitoring tool for the military complex raising Ender. Intended to be an intelligent game interface, the game presents fantasy scenarios and, based on the response by the player, leads the character through pre-set ethical and moral situations that the teachers can use to evaluate the young cadets. Being the brilliant and self-aware mind that he is, Ender soon breaks beyond the game's set parameters and takes the game into unpredictable areas. Ender takes the game farther than anyone ever has, effectively making him the winner, and as we find out later on in the series, that instant of unpredictable game response generated the individualized, artificial intelligence, Jane. In Card's novel, the game plays a dual role of ethical/moral training (with dystopic overtones) and self-awareness and testing of one's own limits (with great psychological benefit). (you should also mention the genocidal impacts of Ender's game play)
<4> As another example, consider Iain Banks' The Player of Games (make sure to include in bib). In this novel, Gurgeh is a game Master. The utopic Culture, rich in diversity and technological advancement, supports his "career" of game playing, and Gurgeh is the best of the best in all forms of games. Gurgeh is then given the chance to travel to a distant alien culture, the Azad, a race not part of his own extremely diverse Culture. Azad's entire sense of culture and political power revolve around a game, also called Azad: played periodically, the winner reigns as Emperor while the other ranks would gain and lose political favors accordingly. The Azadian culture is three-gendered and oppressive, with genderism, classism and racism abounding within the corrupt political structure. Gurgeh's permission to play Azad is given by the Azadians as a façade to gain political leverage with the larger Culture. In kind, the Culture plays Gurgeh as a pawn in a game to destabilize the Azadian political hierarchy. Gurgeh, being the Game Master that he is, surpasses all expectations and enters the finals of the game, facing the reigning Emperor for what seems to be the fate of his Empire. Similar to Ender, Gurgeh finds a way out of the conundrum, effectively winning the larger game by sacrificing the smaller one. In Banks' novel, the game plays a complex role of political structure, gender identification, and once again, opens the way for self-awareness and the testing of one's limits for the main character.
<5> There are numerous other examples of games in science fiction, but this is not the place for an exhaustive study. More interesting to us, these two examples show a pattern of how games are used often in literature: as disseminators of cultural values and as patterns of self-growth. Also, in both of these novels, the games are "won" by their protagonists – showing us how good analytical skills will defeat all the bad guys, ultimately. However, in Delany's novel, he takes the game to a new level. By incorporating both these traditional notions of game theory and combining them with his notions of language modeling, described loosely in his "Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus," he moves science fiction games from finite, winnable solutions to infinitely complex games. And his protagonist doesn't fare nearly so well.
<6> Samuel Delany's novel Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, also subtitled "Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus, Parts One and Two," has entered this age-old philosophical discourse by pushing its readers towards a realization of the nature and benefits of infinite games. Delany offers us a way to consider the notion of infinite games, both in a literary context, and ironically, in a more complex relationship with a classical tradition, as mentioned above, that posits literature as a "simplified representation" of "reality." Delany refuses to allow his literature and his language to be simplified or limiting. To be sure his language is approached in the correct dimension, he forces literature outside of classical literary boundaries. As is well documented, Delany constantly works to break down the binary of form and content by showing how these two elements need each other to construct any meaning. This is the first move in the game of Triton.
<7> In Triton, Delany manipulates generic boundaries by playing with the reader's expectations of the utopian genre. As an arbitrary starting point, the generic level offers a view of the whole playing field of Triton. This novel has many signs that point the reader toward reading Triton as a utopia, dystopia, or somewhere in between. Delany names the novel a "heterotopia," playing on Michel Foucault's use of the term to describe social spaces of transformation. That distinction, however, places the novel in a long line of distinguished prose: borrowing from a range of novels like Plato's The Republic and George Orwell's 1984, Triton is precariously placed in a genre of social speculation. For example, the first subtitle to the novel is "An Ambiguous Heterotopia," a play on Ursula Le Guin's anarchist utopia, The Dispossessed, subtitled "An Ambiguous Utopia." Delany did not write Triton in direct response to The Dispossessed; instead, he added the subtitle after reading Le Guin's novel, shortly before completing his second draft of Triton. He felt that the two novels, if placed in "conversation" with each other, might spark an interesting dialog (Philmus 301).
<8> The dialog that Triton represents, however, is an unusual and intentional addition to the centuries of utopian and dystopian discourse. By being a heterotopia, the novel places itself cautiously on the boundary lines of both forms, while finally settling in neither. This is the basis by which we can best understand the rules of a literary heterotopia – in relation to more well-known utopias and dystopias. Once we have established the rules of the game, then we can examine the "house rules" that Delany employs in his text.
<9> To help in our understanding of his heterotopian form, Delany gives us definitional direction by offering a passage from Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, which places heterotopia on the level of language itself:
Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they make it hard to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy "syntax" in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to "hold together." (emphasis his, qtd. from Triton 292)
For Foucault, a heterotopia is a social space wherein difference reigns; the values and desires of the social realm play off of difference to maintain the structure of the space itself. The difference can be grotesque or disturbing in their appearance, which belies its connection to psychological notions of aphasia and atopia – a loss of memory and place; however, through the grotesque comes less apparent connections and patterns that give the place its social meaning. In the novel and the appendix to Triton, which together comprise the first two parts of the "Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus" series (footnote what the others are), Delany very consciously focuses on this "less apparent" level of syntax. His game in Triton is to "destroy" our expectations of a science fiction novel, of a utopian novel, or even of a dystopian novel.
<10> To demonstrate how Delany uses and manipulates the rules of the science fiction and utopian genres, a closer look at Triton is in order. Perhaps it is best to begin with the background setting of the novel, the moon Triton itself. Most of the novel takes place on a moon of Uranus in 2112. The Satellites, some nine inhabited moons scattered around our solar system, are engaged in a war with the only two inhabited planets, Earth and Mars. This is a war fought without soldiers; it is a political battle fought in negotiation rooms by diplomats, or so the politicians say repeatedly. This war remains in the backdrop for most of the citizens of Triton and appears to the reader as a political game to be played by people in political jobs. It doesn't involve others, just diplomats, elected officials, and anti-war political demonstrators.
<11> Similar to both Ender's Game and The Player of Games, the game in this novel takes on heavily political dimensions. In Ender's Game, the fantasy game that Ender and the other cadets played was meant to train them for leadership roles, as well as to give the instructors insight into their abilities to make decisions and to face hazardous situations. Alongside this, the entire Battleschool is designed around the Battle Games, so that each individual's and each unit's status within the school is determined by rankings within the school's battle games. In The Player of Games, the game Azad was taught from birth because the historic battles of this conquering race were paralleled in Space and on the board of the game. The ones who won the game were given positions of power within the military complex so that they could go off and conquer new worlds for the empire. Again, one's rank and status was determined solely by one's value on the game field. Similarly, Triton employs military games of all sorts; in contrast, however, the main character remains distant from the action of the game, and regardless of how well or how poorly he does at the fantasy game, his rank and status are more self-determined in Delany's novel.
<12> Inside the boundaries of the society in the novel, Delany constructs a culture with remarkable utopian possibility. Within the larger political context of the war, Delany places many subtle descriptions of the political system of the satellites that add to the utopian setting. The citizens are not bound to one political ruler; they each vote for whichever candidate they wish to represent them and then live according to the policies and restrictions of that political representative. There is a more equal distribution of basic services than we currently enjoy; there are still high-wage earners and a welfare system, but as Sam, a government employee points out,
We have a far higher rotation of people on welfare than Luna has, or either of the sovereign worlds. Our welfare isn't a social class who are born in it, and die on it, reproducing half the next welfare generation along the way. Practically everyone spends some time on it. (Triton 179)
This redistribution of wealth has even lowered the workweek to six hours per day, four days per week. Indeed, this seems to be an ideal society – economically and politically.
<13> Delany has reorganized the sexual and general structures in his society. Sixty percent of the population is bisexual, twenty percent homosexual, and twenty percent heterosexual – an idealistic balance. People live in co-ops of varying sexual and stylistic preferences. In fact, there are "forty or fifty basic sexes, falling loosely into nine categories, four homophilic" (99) and (presumably) five heterophilic, referring to the gender with whom one prefers to live, regardless of sexual preference. Or, if one prefers family life, there are family-communes in the outer rings of the city. The possible combinations for relationships, both sexual and platonic, are exploded in a textual move of almost infinite freeplay.
<14> The utopian possibilities develop farther as Delany mentions fantastic scientific advances: males can have children and even suckle infants (in fact, women bear only 70% of the children). Any individual can go for a re-alignment, which can range from a sort of "plastic surgery" makeover to a complete psychological reprogramming designed specifically to suit the desire (or obsessions) of the individual. The citizens dress in a huge number of styles, or, if they prefer, go naked. Triton makes twenty-first century notions of sexuality look like Victorian prudishness.
<15> The setting for Delany's novel is a utopian paradise of almost unthinkable proportions. While the possibility of desire fulfillment is near one hundred percent, the probability does not match. In order to create a heterotopia, Delany also leaves traces of the dystopian in his text. As only one example, Bron, the main character, begins the novel by entering an Ego Booster Booth. These are booths in which a citizen (for a credit transfer) can view a few random minutes of tape that the Government keeps. This strikes a chord of possible repression – the Government has unseen eyes and possibly the power of Big Brother. Granted, most of the characters, and seemingly most of the society, disapprove of and ignore these booths, yet the fact that the government can obtain all of this footage has staggering possibilities.
<16> As well, later in the novel we see the "peaceful" war with no soldiers come to a halt, and the damages are heavy. Two million people die on Mars, ninety percent of Earth's population is wiped away and countless others are killed throughout the solar system due to political sabotage. There are no soldiers, but that does not imply no death. This "game" has no winners, and the utopia on Triton, at least for a moment, is taken over by images of dystopia – destroyed buildings, an absent, unfeeling government, and a terrified populous.
<17> So, Delany's novel demonstrates clear signs of science fiction – a remote location, extrapolated technology, etc. – and demonstrates clear signs of utopia – an idealistic government, an liberated populace – and demonstrates clear signs of dystopia – an omnipresent, omniscient political force, an oppressive military action. As a reader, it is easy to be unsure as to what to make of these different elements within a unified textual context. Delany dubs his novel, remember, "heterotopia" – and Foucault reminds us that heterotopias refuse to be named this and that. It isn't simply science fiction and utopia and dystopia (and a few more and's over that). It is a new game altogether; Triton refuses either category. This society is rich with possibility, and that possibility can be a positive or a negative thing, utopic or dystopic, depending upon the perspective of the character or even of the reader. Delany creates differentiation through the characters, their actions, and the smallest details in his prose.
<18> Yet, Delany also extends this beyond the fictional level of a "story." Indeed, his game is much bigger. Delany shows how the boundaries around literature – the lines we draw to say this is "fictional" and that is "real" – break down when faced with the heterotopic. The traditional rules of the game by which we "play" literature are exploded to an almost infinite level. Extending his metaphor of heterotopia to the literary level, it is important to consider its etymology, especially its use in literary terms. In an interview with Robert Philmus, Delany discusses the term:
Well, a major definition of "heterotopia" is its medical meaning. It's the removal of one part or organ from the body and affixing it at another place in or on the body. That's called a heterotopia. A skin graft is a heterotopia. But so is a sex-change – one of the meanings of the word. So there. (Philmus 320)
The literal meaning of the term has interesting implications on the literary meaning; both imply a removal and a replacement. In medical science, this is accomplished through surgery; on Triton, this is accomplished through a removal of usual expectations for either utopian or dystopian literature, and by replacing these with a new game – heterotopia.
<19> Delany also denies more than these generic names; he simultaneously places his book within the boundaries of science fiction, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology. Kathleen Spencer, in "Deconstructing Tales of Neveryon: Delany, Derrida, and the 'Modular Calculus, Parts I-IV'," has already noted how Delany plays with textual boundaries by placing significance on textual features such as appendices and epigraphs; these elements, which are usually considered extra-textual, are vital pieces of Triton. For example, Foucault's definition of heterotopia does not precede the novel as a typically crucial epigraph might, but is buried deep within the text, before the second appendix.
<20> However, Delany does more than require the reader to read the appendices to get the full impact of Triton. For example, the aforementioned second appendix is a fictional critical analysis of a fictional character, Ashima Slade, and his life's work. Although this might sound well within the bounds of speculative literature, the appendix's subject is "metalogic," which is foundational to Delany's own theory, "the Modular Calculus."
<21> Delany's "Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus" is a perfect example of his sophisticated style. It is a five-part series that focuses on modeling systems, or more specifically, on how one system can be said to "model" another, to contain elements of another, and to be in relation to another. This has enormous implications on the system of literature in which Delany has situated himself by writing the enormously complex text of Trouble on Triton, comprised of a novel (a seeming science fiction u/dystopia and Part I of the "Modular Calculus"), a first appendix (actual notes from his Triton idea journal and scenes that were cut from the novel), and a second appendix (a critical biography of a fictional science fiction character and Part II of the "Modular Calculus"). In the appendix, this topic is discussed directly, in philosophical terms an average sf reader would find "disturbing," to borrow again from Foucault's definition of heterotopia.
<22> The appendix is not the only place that this topic is discussed. In fact, the appendix is part two of Delany's "Modular Calculus" series. The first is the portion of the novel described above, the fictional world of Triton itself. Delany intentionally plays with the metaphor of heterotopia, not only as a game played between the utopian and dystopian discourses, but also as a new game by adding high-level philosophy to the game's rules, i.e., the novel's conventional boundaries.
<23> Bron works as a "metalogician," which is a field that developed as a result of Ashima Slade's contributions. In a chapter punningly entitled "Avoiding Kangaroos," Bron explains his job, again in rather "disturbing" philosophical language. The chapter is dedicated to a discussion of symbolic metalogic; metalogic, like heterotopia, is directly tied to language and the boundaries created when determining meaning. Bron explains:
Language is perimetal, not parametal. Areas of significance space intermesh and fade into one another like color clouds in a three-dimensional spectrum. They don't fit together like hard-edged bricks in a box. What makes "logical" bounding so risky is that the assertion of the formal logician that a boundary can be placed around an area of significance gives you, in such a cloudy situation, no way to say where to set the boundary, how to set it, or if, once set, it will turn out in the least useful. Nor does it allow any way for two people to be sure they have set their boundaries around the same area. Treating soft-edged interpenetrating clouds as though they were hard-edged bricks does not offer much help if you want to build a real discussion of how to build a real house. (Triton 59)
Ironically, within the fictional bounds of the novel, the main character is talking about setting boundaries to determine the reality of any situation, and talking about it as a tricky game. Indeed, with Delany, it is. What he has offered us in this novel are intermeshing clouds of fiction, philosophy, politics, psychology, and sociology. When these extra-literary fields enter a literary context, they also force literature into these fields. This is where game theory, a traditionally philosophical field, helps to illuminate Triton's meanings.
<24> In basic game theory, there is a fundamental distinction drawn between finite and infinite games. Finite games are games played to be won; infinite games are played to continue the play. On a rather obvious level, a game like poker or Monopoly is a finite game; the rules are specified in order to define each player's role, the progression of the game, the stakes, and finally, the pay-off, goal, or winning move. The game is over at a pre-defined moment when the criterion for winning is fulfilled. Alternately, an infinite game does not have a pre-defined moment of winning. Instead, staying in play is the player's only "goal." There are still boundaries drawn; the rules define legal and illegal moves and player's roles, just as in a finite game, yet this game, if played well, will continue to be played as long as there are legitimate players.
<25> Delany's novel models an infinite game on several levels. His manipulation of generic boundaries is one way of playing this game. In the discourse of fictional social speculation, there have traditionally been two fields – utopia and dystopia. However, Delany offers us a heterotopia as a way to shift these finite fields of play to one that is infinite. Utopias and Dystopias are finite because there is a distinct, pre-defined way to write these discourses – utopias must be "ideally positive" and dystopias must be "ideally negative." Heterotopias defy either of these names, instead relying on character and reader perspective to keep the question in play.
<26> In Triton, however, the game is larger than either one of these literary polemics. Through Delany's "Modular Calculus," we are forced to consider the novel beyond its own boundaries. This passage from the second appendix serves best to summarize the calculus and exemplify the complexity of Delany's thinking:
The problem of the modular calculus, again, is: How can one relational system model another? This breaks down into two questions: (One) What must pass from system-B to system-A for us (system-C) to be able to say that system-A now contains some model of system-B? (Two) Granted the proper passage, what must the internal structure of system-A be for us (or it) to say it contains any model of system-B? (Triton 302)
Delany goes on in this appendix to speak in his most lucid language about the modular calculus, using examples that range from the acquisition of information from our five senses, to logical puzzles involving the "supposed" color of the Taj Mahal. What Delany shows here is that the novel Triton, system-A, has taken central epistemological questions from political and philosophical history, system-B, and presented them in a literary guise to his reader, system-C. And remember, even in his plainest language, this second appendix is contained within the bounds of a "critical fiction," again forcing the rules of the game to be changed. Delany, by pushing the boundaries of several genres and using the interaction between those genres to create a sort of calculus to measure linguistic differences in meaning, has created an infinite game.
<27> The "Modular Calculus" series, beginning with Triton, examines modeling systems, or the ways one system can be said to "contain" another or even to "relate" to another. Delany's manipulation of generic boundaries places both the novel and the appendices (as separate structures) into a system of relation, both with each other and with other non-fictional disciplines, from philosophy to politics, psychology, and sociology. This is evident in the discussion of politics between the first two parts of the "Modular Calculus" – the novel and its own appendices.
<28> On a political level, the Satellites, as described in the utopian section, are an exceptionally "free" society, in relation to both our Earth and the text's future-Earth. In opposition to the world of Triton that we see through Bron's eyes, we also get to see an even more oppressive Earth when he visits on a diplomatic mission with his friend Sam. In contrast to the vivid colors of Triton, Earth seems mechanical and enclosed. There are only two basic styles of clothing on Earth. The government seems to keep the people in a state of martial law, as e-girls, Earth's police force, roam everywhere. Bron, who ironically finds his trip to Earth to be a "sumptuously pleasant and totally edgeless time," also describes it in this way:
Over the next few days, though they went to sumptuous restaurants, took long trips in mechanical conveyances through endless, dark tunnels, even went to several symphonic concerts, and spent one afternoon at a museum in which they were apparently the only visitors… Bron had the feeling that they had not really left the Earth space-port complex. They had seen no sky. (133)
Earth, from this description, seems to be a bounded world, full of rigid rules and harsh environmental lines. Triton, from this perspective, definitely seems like Eden.
<29> The relationship between these binarily opposed cultures spawns the war. Although the exact details of the war are kept intentionally obscure in the text, it seems to be a battle of boundary control, as wars often are. Earth wants more control over the Satellites; the Satellites wish to keep their boundaries – boundaries that ironically contain societies of few, flexible boundaries. Wars, however, are not infinite games. They are played to be won. This war, at the end of the novel, comes to a head. Because there are no soldiers, the governments instead target other things. On Triton and the Satellites, the targets were the gravity generators that helped to contain the atmosphere and gravity for the cities, causing massive structural damage and a loss of a huge number of people. On Earth and Mars, large scale attacks on metropolitan areas decimate the population. When the dust settles, the Satellites have "won" the war, though the losses are heavy. This represents a fundamental metaphor for Delany – the loss of the center. With 90% of Earth gone, humanity's traditional center is gone, removed to the Outer Satellites. Delany has ended this battle, this finite game, in favor of the infinite, showing that binaries and battles may be resolved but are never completed entirely.
<30> Game theory has focused for a long time on the metaphor of war in games. Michael Holquist even discusses this metaphor as it extends to literature, saying, "the relationship of chess to battle is roughly parallel to the relationship which obtains between utopia and actual society" (Holquist 107). Delany, again, consciously enters this discourse of philosophical speculation with his novel Triton. However, the war between the Satellites and Earth is not ended in a finite fashion. The victory afforded to Triton and the other moons reflects a move toward the infinite.
<31> Imaginary war games and real military actions are often studied in game theory as an interesting combination between finite and infinite games. Alongside the political action of the novel, Delany uses an image of a fantasy war game, Vlet, to comment on this. Many of the characters we meet play a game called "vlet," which seems to be a combination between chess, Risk, and Dungeons & Dragons. Like other similar games, vlet is played between two players (though often several people join as a team to challenge a more competent opponent) who vie for domination of the universe using a militia of mythical beasts, spells, natural forces, and, of course, luck of the die. The game seems very complex to the non-player; the system for figuring out the score in the game is given to the reader as an extremely complex, mostly nonsensical, and over-all illegible differential calculus equation..
<32> Bron, the focus of the reader's attention, tries unsuccessfully to master vlet. Noting the complex scoring system, for instance, he says, "Lawrence had not taught him that yet; he knew only that q was a measurement of strategic angles of attack [over different sorts of terrain N, M, and A] and that small ones netted more points than large ones" (22). This literal game of vlet models the larger political situation on Triton and the other inhabited worlds. It is complex, its rules hard to follow, and, interestingly enough, the three times that we encounter the game in the text, it is either in the middle of being played, and hence we see neither the beginning nor the end, or it fails to be completed, twice because of military actions that disrupt the playing field. Delany intends that vlet appear to be played, and not to be won. Games can go on for hours, and for Bron, these hours seem infinite.
<33> Bron never successfully learns to play vlet. He realizes that he is destined never to be a good vlet player. This small, seemingly unimportant detail in the novel shows us a deeper game of Delany's, especially if we consider the interesting psychological game that he plays with Bron. Bron is a character that defies typing, which is not to say that he isn't a type. As a central theme of the novel, he actively denies any type, constantly forcing himself to say that he isn't this type or isn't that type. Every time he is confronted with this issue, one of the other characters tells him that it is unavoidable to be a type. One of Bron's best friends, Lawrence, even puts it this way: "My dear young man…everyone is a type. The true mark of social intelligence is how unusual we can make our particular behavior for the particular type we are when we are put under particular pressure" (5). Bron insistently tries to avoid being named, only to fall into a trap again and again. For Bron, this trap happens as he realizes that by denying any type, he has excluded himself from being happy within any game.
<34> Bron has an interesting history. Growing up on Mars, Bron leaves his family at a young age and spends several years as a prostitute. There he develops a very neurotic understanding of relationships, and his neuroses are what fuel his dilemma. Bron yearns throughout the novel to find a place where he will be happy, a place where he can say "that is me." However, through his difficult logic, he repetitively denies this for himself. This theme, Bron's quest to be an "individual" by denying all types and yet being caught by a loss of self, is yet another way that Delany models heterotopia. Recall Foucault's assertion that "Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they make it hard to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy ‘syntax' in advance" (qtd. from Triton 292). What Bron fails to realize is that he is deeply caught up in the game he tries to avoid – typing, naming.
<35> The poststructural influence on game theory becomes evident in Delany's novel. The concept of an infinite game is an old one in philosophy, but the structural dimensions of these systems has been explored only in relatively recent years. Derrida has commented on "game" and "play" in several of his texts. For him, these terms speak of an elusive "centered structure" where at the center rests the elusive and imaginary signified. The "game" is a game of "capture the signified." What happens is that signifiers are constantly being created that move us farther and farther away from the center of the system, while all of the time we pursue the center with the force of our desires. "Play" and "game," for Derrida, are hard to define, and have layers of meanings. "Game" is both the boundaries around which are drawn the structure of the playing field – the rules or the grammar of the play – as well as the goal of the play itself – the telos or thing being hunted; "play" has a double-meaning of the action of the game, as well as a nicely ironic meaning of "free-play," or the movement of the pieces of a system that control the action of that system.
<36> For Derrida, a centered structure, for instance language, is always in free-play, its components always in action away from the center, unless we force the signifiers towards the center. He puts it this way in "Structure, Sign, Play":
The concept of centered structure – although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or science – is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire. (Derrida 1118)
Delany textualizes this idea of game theory, exploring further the possibility of a system without a center. For him, the game is to show that heterotopias, by affording us an already decentered system, alter our expectations of desire. In her foreward to the most recent edition of Trouble on Triton (pub year?), Kathy Acker does a brilliant reading of the forces of desire that affect Bron, through his relationship with the Spike (explain the Spike). Not to repeat uneccessarily, it is only important here to realize that the quest is a game metaphor, and for Delany, that metaphor is quite different than traditional implementations of quests. His quest is elusive, decentered, undefinable, and all-too-often, unwinnable. But, through his obvious passion for the vilification
<37> As Acker notes, the Spike is Bron's quest after the elusive signified that Derrida speaks of in "Structure, Sign, and Play." With Delany the signified is not only in a textual guise; it is also embroidered deep within the social structure of Triton. Bron lusts after the Spike, desiring her to be his constant stability. However, he is blind to the reality that she can never be his. He is caught in the double-bind created from the quest for center. He places his internal desire for fulfillment on things outside of himself. He desires the idea of a self – of a completed, totalized, finite structure that limits the amount of freeplay and possibility.
<38> For Bron, there is a constant tension between becoming a totalized individual, by the fulfillment of internal desires, and the need to place those desires outside of the self, causing a necessary lack of internal completion. Bron is still left searching for that piece of himself that will stabilize his existence and give him meaning. However, Derrida seems to say that this inherently contradictory placement/displacement holds the structure together by allowing a paradoxical, constructed existence of freeplay and center.
<39> This idea is addressed as Bron recurrently names himself as an individual and denies any attempt to put himself in a set "type." A majority of his behavior is determined (and over-determined) by his attempts to avoid classification, even despite persistent warnings by other characters of the impossibility of this task. In "Structure, Sign, and Play," Derrida says,
With this certainty [of a contradictorily coherent, centered structure] anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by the game, of being as it were from the very beginning at stake in the game. (Derrida 1124)
Bron, with all his anxiety, is in search of this certainty. His game throughout the novel is to solidify his understanding of his own purpose, and to master his anxiety. The "game" to which Derrida refers is widened beyond a textual arena to a larger, social context as Bron weaves and "plays" his way through various social situations, only to be again and again "caught by the game."
<40> Perhaps the best example of Bron involved with "the game" does not occur on Triton, but on Earth where Bron takes a trip with Sam to get away from his first failure with the Spike. In a twist of synchronicity, he bumps into her at an archaeological dig in Inner Mongolia and later invites her to a posh restaurant hoping to patch things up. The whole visit reminds him of his early days on Mars. As a male prostitute, he was often escorted to these kinds of restaurants by his customers. All through the evening, Bron constantly reminds himself of the codes of behavior and the roles each participant should play that he was bound to as a prostitute. Regardless of his previous assertions that he defies any set type, he guides and judges all of his and her actions according to the "types" of prostitute and customer, down to the expectation of sex after the meal. He is confused when the Spike breaks out of the "type" guidelines and finally becomes enraged when she refuses his sexual advances. Despite his previous assertions that he defies any type, he certainly allows his own ideas of types to guide his behavior. This, curiously and ironically, slips his attention.
<41> Bron is hopelessly caught up in a chase after something he will never find, and he is the one who keeps himself from fulfilling his quest. He claims to love the Spike, as he incessantly hounds her to "throw up the theater. Join your life to mine. Become one with me. Be mine. Let me possess you wholly" (Triton 176). She turns him down realizing that he doesn't love her. Instead, Bron has forced her into a position of completion. He created this role for her out of blind desire; she was to make him complete, but he doesn't even know what he lacks. The Spike knows that she is not his lack – she's not even his "type." He is searching for stability, and yet he repels anyone who offers it to him. The moment he thinks he has found what he wants, he pushes it away. Yet, Bron settles on Spike as his center, his goal. When she denies him, he feels his deepest loss, his beginning realization that there will never be a center for him.
<42> Feeling totally lost, Bron returns to Triton with a bruised ego, coming up with every external excuse he can. He often blames it all on the Spike, to whom he attributes most of the actions and emotions that he himself contains. Soon after his return, the political game comes to a head: War hits Triton, and Bron has a moment of clarity. Not only is his personal life shattered, but also his physical environment. As he roams a devastated Triton trying to get home, he manages to save, with the help of Lawrence, a co-op full of "helpless" women. Of course, typical of Delany, the women weren't so helpless, but Bron is not aware of this. Although his help is only superficial, it shows the reader that Bron is not totally lost; he is a sympathetic man caught in an unsympathetic system.
<43> This moment of clarity leads to the last level of heterotopia in the novel, a literal heterotopia, punningly recalling Delany's medical definition. Bron, desiring to become the woman that is perfect for a type like himself, undergoes a sex-change and a refixation treatment. The result of this is what is to be expected – we end up with a female version of the same system. Even Bron realizes later that his quest failed the moment it began because what he desires is himself. At that moment, he mistakenly thinks that switching to what he sees as his opposite (which turns out to be just a female version of a similar person, betraying his reliance on a binary way of thinking) will solve the problem. Bron is left at the end of the novel as a shattered person, realizing perhaps for the first time that the pieces do not fit together "as hard-edged bricks," but only as "colorful clouds." In an image that I first interpreted as suicidal, Bron is left with a singular surety that "the dawn would never come." However, upon more reflection, this is not a suicidal declaration by Bron, but a slow and painful recognition that his centered self will never be found. For Bron, this is a disturbing image; for Delany, however, this loss of center is meant to be inspiring, an infinite game of desire to be played.
<44> Bron refuses to recognize that on Triton, as a decentered or infinite system, there is no centered-structure, except what an individual creates. The backdrop of Delany's novel is a paradise of almost unthinkable proportions. In Derridean terms, the possibilities of total desire fulfillment, and thereby (re)claiming whichever signifier is desired, are near one-hundred percent. Many of the characters have played the game well and seem to be happy. For example, the Mummers who wander the street sounding out strings of nonsense syllables, or the Rampant Order of Dumb Beasts who scar themselves endlessly, never bathe, and are dedicated to the ending of meaningless communication (or is it meaningful? – it remains intentionally unspecified and illusory in the text). There is Lawrence, Bron's only steady friend in the novel, a septuagenarian homosexual with an aversion to clothing; or, the confident Sam, a black politician whom Bron claims to hate with a passion. All of these characters and character-types seem to have found a place in this fragmented, shattered society. They find, somehow, a Grand Purpose to their existence, whether it takes the form of meaningless muttering or a game of vlet. These Grand Purposes remain successfully and largely individual. No one political system retains overwhelming power over the people of Triton; no one personal system gains dominance over another.
<45> This represents the highest level of game that Delany plays in this complex novel. Bron's plight represents only the worst of it; the failure of his possibility can mask the rest of what is going on here. Looking at how many other characters live in this novel shows us Bron's case is not unusual, but it is rare. All of the characters I have mentioned above – the Spike, Sam, and Lawrence – have determined how to live successfully in a decentered system, a system that acknowledges and insists upon infinite freeplay. Bron looks for the eternal truth; they look for the relational, the momentary, the dramatic, the passionate, the theatrical. Bron wants a stable identity; they allow their types to shift moment to moment, following whatever desires they have at the time. This philosophy that most other main characters adopt is what Delany wants us to notice. For Delany, the game is to decenter even these ideas within the boundaries of his novel, which of course, is why they are in the background.
<46> The "Modular Calculus," of which the novel portion of Triton is only the first part, is focused on the troubles of modeling systems. One of the main problems he shows in Triton is that of naming, which is a form of setting boundaries around concepts that reference objects or other ideas. When we try to name things, there are two approaches: We can name things relationally, where we look for the applicable variety of rules, the modular relationships, the momentary alignments, and we allow the name a modular flexibility; or, we can name things in the classical understanding of centering, where the rules are pre-defined and known by all of the players. In this latter game, the boundaries define a limited set of acceptable moves that move the players toward a winning solution.
<47> This is the game that Bron tries to play within the boundaries of Triton. His shattered, depressed self is all that he is left with at the close of the novel; this is Delany's way of modeling an infinite game. In the end, Bron loses the infinite game the only way it is possible to lose that game: by ceasing to play. However, the other characters that we see – the Spike, Sam, Lawrence – are all winning for one simple reason: they still believe enough in the game that they continue to play. The Spike goes off to teach at a University; Sam moves on in his political career; Lawrence gallivants around the universe playing in a jazz band. Each character fluidly and painlessly redefines themselves according to the rules of the infinite game.
<48> For Delany, literature is an infinite game. The freeplay of elements inside a decentered structure allows for infinite play – a game that will continue to be played as long as there are players. Trouble on Triton, both on content and formal levels, focuses on this type of game through the use of heterotopia. By displacing Bron's and our expectations throughout the novel, we are forced to consider possible "moves" that we hadn't considered before. This, on a generic level, forces us to consider alternatives to either utopia or dystopia. The content of the novel speaks to a political and social level by asking the reader to consider a social and political environment where the boundaries are set relationally by the individual, rather than fixed in a centered system of signification. It also works on a psychological level as we consider our own relationship to this piece of fiction that extends beyond the bounds of literature and into philosophical introspection. Overall, Delany's novel asks us to play with the infinite, to enter into conversation with his text and decide for ourselves what the appropriate game is, as long as we are willing to play.
Works Cited
Holquist, Michael. "How to Play Utopia: Some brief notes on the distinctiveness of utopian fiction." Game, Play, Literature. Ed. Jacques Ehrmann. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968. 106-123.
Delany, Samuel R. Trouble on Triton. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.
Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign, Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences." Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed, Hazard Adams. Revised Edition. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1992. 1117-1126. (Make sure to use the version in Writing & Difference for your citations)
Philmus, Robert M. "On Triton and Other Matters: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany." Science Fiction Studies. 17:3 (1990). 295-324.
Spencer, Kathleen L. "Deconstructing Tales of Neveryon: Delany, Derrida, and the 'Modular Calculus, Parts I-IV'." Essays in Arts & Sciences. 14 (1985 May). 59-89.