Charles Petzold

For several years I've been working on a manuscript for a book tentatively entitled The Amazing Imaginary Computing Machine of Mr. Alan M. Turing and subtitled A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Famous Paper on Computability. I expect the book to be about 300 pages in length. The first 2/3rds are completed. I plan to finish the book by the end of this year, and I am now seeking an enthusiastic publisher.

As the subtitle suggests, the book is a heavily annotated version of Alan Turing's famous (but largely unread) paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." Several introductory chapters put Turing's paper in historical perspective, and particularly discuss the origins and meaning of that scary German word. Throughout my elucidation of Turing's paper and Turing Machines, I intertwine biographical information about Alan Turing and his fascinating life.

Over the years, several readers of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software have asked me about a sequel to that book. This is it. What Code is to digital hardware design, The Amazing Imaginary Computing Machine is to computation theory. What it lacks in comprehensiveness it makes up in readability and ease of use. I can imagine the book being read by high-school students, but also being assigned as supplementary reading in college courses on computability. And who knows? It might even tap the pop-science and pop-math markets.

If you are a publisher with experience in marketing books of this sort, let's talk. My email address is cp@charlespetzold.com, and my cell phone number is available on request.