[JoeFromSidney]

Sometimes people get the strangest things out of a movie or story, regardless of what the author intended. Back when I was in graduate school, in the mid-50s, I took a course in Theory of Games. It involved using mathematics to choose game strategies when you didn't know what strategy your opponent would pick (both of you have a limited list of strategies that define the game).

I had an idea for a story in which two sides (human and aliens) were using Game Theory to plan their war, but were mistaken about their opponents' value system. That is, each was wrong about the other's payoff. Under that situation, each could think they were winning, while the war was bleeding both white.

It was years later, in the late 1960s, when I finally got the time to write the story. It was published in ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION under the title Zero Sum.

To me, it was primarily an exercise in mathematics, dressed up as a piece of science fiction. However, reviewers thought it was intended as an anti-Vietnam story. I really hadn't thought in terms of Vietnam at all. It was just that I'd finally found the time to write a story I'd been meaning to write for years.

[Zhang Fei]

It was years later, in the late 1960s, when I finally got the time to write the story. It was published in ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION under the title Zero Sum.

Very impressive. You're the closest thing Free Republic has to Jerry Pournelle.