This essay, focusing on a slice of Swedish prose fiction from the 1960-70's, raises some questions concerning the artificial subject, along with discussions of game theory and automation. Torsten Ekbom's "strategic model theatre" Spelmatriser för Operation Albatross [1966; Game Matrices for Operation Albatross] is the main object of study. The (often very bizarre) text fragments in this book are, fictionally, generated by a number of computers. The figures acting in this game are devoid of skeletons; they are merely bodies of information, produced by machines. In dialogue with (among others) Norbert Wiener, Lewis Mumford, John von Neumann and Marshall McLuhan, Ekbom's text is found to illustrate a broader context of cybernetics and subjectivity in the 1960's. Finally, by using the shift of epistemological dominant (described by N. Katherine Hayles) from "presence-absence" to "pattern-randomness", Ekbom's Game Matrices for Operation Albatross finds itself in an historically interesting intersection of subjectivity: the life of Man in the 1960's is becoming increasingly "coded" and "randomized", while the computer is still that huge Machine, not yet, as today, the subconscious of everyday life.
Source: Author's Abstract