Computer Chess-Game Over. Shall We Play Again?

Ah, the early nineteen eighties, the beginning of the personal computing era, pre-Windows.  Horn-rimmed baby geniuses were whipping their creations for all they were worth to build the future.  Build it, they did.  Long term, I firmly believe that it will be something cool, even wonderful.  But right now, baby is still in it's terrible twos and we are cleaning up the poopy as we try to figure out just what it is we have wrought and just what sort of adult will it grow into. 

This little indie scifi thinker was made in that era, when those fellas were doing said driving, in this case, at a convention where they showed off chess programs.  They would play the computers against each other and the best program would square off against a chess champion waiting to best the winner.  This is before Deep Blue and the idea that a computer program could beat a human chess player was unthinkable.

Unkept hair and awkward social presences, check.  Sheer computer passion and genius?  Check.  Hot lady geek just waiting for a moment to remove glasses and top (neither happens, though if it had, it would have been glorious), check.

Big machine mystery?  Oh, heck yeah.

Problem is, they didn't fill the intervening space with characters I felt interested in or compelled by.  The central dilemmas, I could not care less about.  Mostly, I felt a little awkward by anything not completely computer related.

Yes, the mystery was there, but unlike, say, PI, which had a similar premise but a far more interesting execution, this one failed to really build on it's premise and just kind of left me cold.

Yeah, that was weird at the end, but a whole lot of not much to get to it.

Try again.