# Moxon — Can Such Things Be? character guide

> Moxon in Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce.

**Role:** major

**First appearance:** 0012-moxon-s-master

## Snapshot

An inventor who builds a chess-playing automaton and speaks of it with unsettling intimacy, as though the machine were listening and keeping score.

## Who they are

Moxon is a mechanician whose chess-playing automaton draws visitors curious to see a machine outplay men—and to hear its maker defend it with a strange, proprietary tenderness. He insists the thing has a mind of its own, and his talk slides from engineering into something closer to metaphysics or obsession. The tension lies in whether Moxon controls his creation or has quietly surrendered something to it, and that ambiguity is what makes every game at his table feel like a wager with consequences.

## Relationships

### [Hawver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters/hawver)

_professional_

Hawver is Moxon's assistant, and their relationship is strained by Moxon's dangerous experiments with artificial intelligence.

### [Hawver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters/hawver)

_professional_

Hawver is Moxon's assistant, and their relationship is strained by Moxon's dangerous experiments with artificial intelligence.

## In the story

### [Moxon's Master](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/moxon-s-master)

Inventor and philosopher who argues that machines think; killed by his own automaton.

### [The Realm of the Unreal](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/the-realm-of-the-unreal)

Inventor of a chess-playing machine that exhibits eerie behavior.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters/moxon
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters