Apparently first published in Martin Gardner's column in Scientific
American magazine in the early 1970's, John Horton Conway's "Game of
Life" launched great interest in the nascent field of cellular automata.
The model (for it's not really a "game") manifests surprisingly complex
behavior with only a few simple rules. Many of the technical papers,
articles, and books inspired by the simulation are only now finding
their way onto the World Wide Web.

Many of the folks who were captivated by the original article would
have done their explorations with pencil and paper. Now with "xlife",
whether you hope to gain profound insight into the nature of life,
the universe, and everything, or whether you just enjoy watching the
"puffer trains" crash into each other, you can explore the simulation
easily, on your workstation. The program supports a nearly infinite
playfield, and allows you to zoom in and zoom out, speed up and slow
down, so you can see all the action. Moreover, it can save and load
patterns, and the package even includes a couple of programs to convert
between popular formats.

A sample of significant and interesting starting patterns is included,
and a few minutes spent with a search engine will likely turn up lots
and lots more.

Homepage:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html
