Megawatt

[nickmontfort]

The program Megawatt is based on passages from Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt, first published in 1953 but written much earlier, when Beckett was aiding the French Resistance during World War II.

The novel Megawatt leaves aside all of the more intelligible language of Beckett’s novel and is based, instead, on that which is most systematic and inscrutable. It does not just recreate these passages, although with minor changes the Megawatt code can be used to do so. In the new novel, rather, they are intensified by generating, using the same methods that Beckett used, significantly more text than is found in the already excessive Watt.

Megawatt is a bit unusual as a novel generator in that it takes no input and is deterministic.

Blog post: http://nickm.com/post/2014/11/megawatt/ Code: http://nickm.com/code/megawatt.py PDF of output: http://nickm.com/poems/megawatt.pdf epub of output: http://nickm.com/poems/megawatt.epub

[nickmontfort]

There's only one flaw - it should have been based on Moby-Dick instead. Thanks to all for a great NaNoGenMo 2014.

[MichaelPaulukonis]

There's only one flaw - it should have been based on Moby-Dick instead

There's always next year. And what would a year be without a whale to pine for?