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#2924
Avatar photoJohn D Salt
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Let’s not forget some of the classics of SF. Asimov, Heinlein, “Doc” Smith and L Ron Hubbard were all members of Fletcher Pratt’s naval wargaming circle in the 1930s, and Pratt himself wrote SF. I expect that’s why a “space navy” is a convention of SF, whereas a “space air force” is not. Fred Jane wrote an SF novel, before it was called SF, “The Incubated Girl”. And of course there’s Robert Louis Stephenson, and it’s hard to imagine that Sterne wasn’t a wargamer from Uncle Toby’s game in “Tristram Shandy”. And isn’t Len Deighton a wargamer?

I would guess that there are plenty more examples to be dug up. It seems to me that the common factors are the exercise of the imagination, and an interest in how multi-party interctions work out over time.

All the best,

John.