Herbert's Wake

Berkley Medallion edition cover

Here in 2020, I'm looking back at the science fiction stories of Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. In this blog post, I comment on Herbert's artificial intelligence Sci Fi story "Do I Wake or Dream?" published in the August 1965 issue of Galaxy Magazine, which Herbert later revised in 1978 (published in book format as Destination: Void ).
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Artificial Intelligence
One of the core story topics that animates the science fiction genre is the creation of human-like artificial intelligence. Many science fiction story tellers have found it impossible to resist creating stories with faster-than-light space travel, interactions with alien beings from other worlds and man-made artificial minds. Asimov wrote many Sci Fi stories about machines with human-like minds (example) and he believed he would be most well remembered for his positronic robot stories. What are Herbert's computer and artificial intelligence credentials?

human hybernation technology
cover by Paul Alexander

Herbert became quite interested in computer technology and in 1980 he published a non-fiction book called Without Me You're Nothing: The Essential Guide to Home Computers. Herbert's "essential guide" was written with a co-author, so I have no confidence that Herbert had any deep understanding of integrated circuits or any other technical issue related to computers.

Our 55 year mission to strange new worlds
How did Herbert's description of imaginary computer technology in "Do I Wake or Dream?" strike readers of the 1960s and does this 1965 story still hold up (after 55 years) as a Sci Fi story about futuristic computer technology?

In 1965, most people had never touched a computer. Computers with integrated circuits were just going into service in 1965 (example). Such "state of the art" computers weighed over 1,000 pounds and had about 16K of memory.

AGC: A Girl's Computer

The AGC computer that took men to the Moon in 1969 was a marvel of miniaturization; at 70 pounds it was about as powerful as an Apple II and the other "personal" computers that first came into homes in the late 1970s. These days, kids carry around in their pockets computerized smart phones with 64GB of memory and vastly more processing power than the AGC of 50 years ago.

1966

Devil in the Details
In "Do I Wake or Dream?", Herbert attempts to go where Asimov never went: into the details of creating a conscious artificial intelligence. Herbert's strategy for writing "Do I Wake or Dream?" seems to have been going to the library, reading some articles about computers and human brains and then cramming the jargon he'd read onto a story. This is the same strategy that Herbert used when writing Heisenberg's Eyes. It is the time-honored approach for non-scientists who try to write about technical topics, but it can cause problems; many readers will struggle with all the jargon.

on page 32, August 1965 issue of Galaxy Magazine

If I had to guess, Herbert might have started writing "Do I Wake or Dream?" either right after the death of Norbert Wiener in 1964 or possibly a bit earlier, after publication of an interview that was published in U.S. News & World Report. On page 32 of the August 1965 issue of Galaxy Magazine, Herbert depicts the intrepid crew of the Earthling making use of one of Wiener's cybernetic approaches. Such analogue pattern learning devices were made in the 1950s by people such as Dennis Gabor, but soon thereafter digital computers could quickly and efficiently solve these kinds of systems of equations. Sadly, doing so did not lead to conscious machines.

Alternate Herbert in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art
by Antonio Schomburg

In "Do I Wake or Dream?", Herbert's basic "insight" for how to make a conscious computer was to stimulate a "sleeping" unconscious computer to wake up and magically become conscious (hence, the title of the story AND the title of this blog post). In the story, there is a parallel between the sleeping colonists in hybernation on the starship Earthling and the sleeping (unconscious) ship's computer.

Techno-jargon
In her 1967 review (in the May issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) of Destination: Void, Judith Merril noted that much of the story is "unreadable". Did the book improve after Herbert updated it in 1978? Commenting briefly in the August 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Charles N. Brown's opinion was that Destination: Void is "dull and talky", and "a philosophical discussion on the nature of consciousness disguised as a novel".

Inside Hal's brain

Writing in the November 1979 issue of Science Fiction Review, Neal Wilgus compared Destination: Void to 2001: a space odyssey. Asimov had imagined intelligent machines that would be constrained by their programming to follow orders given to them by humans, although he wrote several stories about the idea that robots could lie to humans. Clarke (1968) imagined a machine intelligence (the HAL 9000) that would lie to humans and even kill humans in order to carry out its programmed mission objectives.

2001 codes

OMG! Acid Phosphatase!
"Do I Wake or Dream?" takes place on the interstellar spaceship Earthling where the three-letter technobabble codes begin to flow on page 1. OMC: Organic Mental Core. Yes, the advanced computer technology of Herbert's imagined future is so crummy that human brains are used to run the automated systems of the spaceship.

Spock's Brain

The first time I saw a Sci Fi story about using a human brain to run a city or a spaceship was in Star Trek. In the episode called  "Spock's Brain", an alien species has fantastic advanced technology that allows them to teleport around the galaxy, but they need to steal brains in order to keep the life-support systems of their underground city running. Herbert's basic idea in "Do I Wake or Dream?", that a complex spaceship needs a conscious brain in charge (to maintain homeostatic control) is silly.

In the Ekcolir Reality
Mouse Brain brand thermostat.
Each device contains a
living mouse brain!

Every modern home has a simple feedback control system that controls room temperature: a thermostat. There isn't a tiny mouse brain inside your house's thermostat and you don't need a human brain to automate the systems of a spaceship.

Fast Paced
Where it took Clarke a hundred agonizing pages in 2001 to finally shut-down HAL, an insane OMC has already been killed by the human crew of the Earthling before the events depicted in "Do I Wake or Dream?" begin. Without an OMC to run routine ship operations, the human crew must man the controls, including the "AAT board".

Prue and the UMB 360 computer.

PC Moonbase Calling
United Moonbase: UMB. The director of Project Control at UMB suggests to the crew that they simply convert their onboard computer into a conscious artificial intelligence that can replace the dead OMC, a task which everyone in the story believes is impossible given their current technology. DDA!

original cover art
by Paul Alexander

PNF
Actually, Herbert was fairly conservative in his use of acronyms. Here is what he lists as the state-of-the-art computer components that are available for building a conscious computer: Eng multipliers, pseudoneuron fiber, relays, tape reels and nerex wire. "Pseudoneuron fiber" is Herbert's alternative to the "positronic" circuits used by Asimov.      HANDWAVE™

Singularity Machine
In "Do I Wake or Dream?", the crew of the Earthling goes ahead with the PC plan, magically modifying their ship's computer and ends up with a newly-created artificial intelligence that has god-like powers. In the final line of Herbert's story, the machine tells the humans who created it: "you must decide how you will worship me".

robox repair unit (left), human clone (right)      Interior art by John Giunta

Google AI at work. The Color Reality

I suppose we can excuse Herbert for his imaginary god-like AI; his story is set in the far future and who knows what might happen... someday. By the early 1960s, Irving Good was promoting the idea that during the 20th century computers would experience an "intelligence explosion", after which humans could retire from all further efforts to come up with new inventions. After the singularity, super-intelligent computers would Rule!

inside the spaceship Earthling

According to promoters of the "super-intelligence" idea, after the technological singularity is reached, machines will outperform humans in all intellectual endeavors. Sadly, here in 2020 we are still waiting for the intelligent machines to arrive.

The Greatest Story Never Told
If you are a believer in the technological singularity, then it should be possible to make an exciting story about achieving the singularity, but where to begin? I give Herbert a high score for giving readers some hint that creating human-like artificial intelligence might be difficult. Too many other Sci Fi stories condense difficult (or even impossible) technological advances into one page or less so as not to bore the reader.

Quick, man the AAT Board!

However, Herbert then falls into the typical pulp Sci Fi trap of creating a "dramatic" life or death race against time during which our fictional artificial intelligence research & development team must succeed or perish. In a 2012 commentary on Destination: Void by Admiral Ironbombs, we are invited to wonder if "there are SF-reading scientists and engineers out there who’d find this novel orgasmic". I've never seen the revised 1978 version of this story, but, sorry to say, in the case of the original "Do I Wake or Dream?", the answer is NO. That story is typical Herbert, spouting endless techno-jargon (such as "constant variable") that is quite mind-numbing if you actually read all the passages such as, "21.006 centimeters of the K-A₄ neurofiber with random-spaced end bulbs and multisynapses."

Dare I wake?

If it walks like a duck....
Herbert makes mention of von Neumann's bottleneck and the Vaucanson duck on the same page of the story along with statements like "living systems aren't living below the molecular level". "Frankenstein's zombie", the Sorcerer's Apprentice and "a Golem that'll destroy us" all get mention as the hand-wringing intensifies: dare we make a conscious computer?

Prue is the only woman in the story.
"Damn that woman's big mouth."

Dr. Weygand
Another more recent commentary on Destination: Void points with favor towards the interplay of the main characters in the story. One of these is Dr. Prudence Weygand, the token female in "Do I Wake or Dream?". All of the people in the story are clones. There have been previous attempts to make a conscious machine and they all ended badly. So here, for the 7th such attempt, "expendable" clones are used.

Female-plus in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Lloyd Rognan and Harold McCauley

Positive Spin
"The focus is always the substance of what the crew is trying to do by means of the details of computer schema, adjacent matrices, quantum physics and neurobiology. " -John Folk-Williams

Dr. Prudence Weygand

Herbert is funny in his introduction of Dr. Weygand to readers, describing her as a "disturbing female-plus creature".

Acting Captain Bickle is worried about Prue because she could be trouble among the otherwise all male crew of spaceship Earthling. We learn that Prue is rated "9-d green", which means she has a powerful sex drive and has to be given sex-suppressing drugs to avoid disrupting ship operations.

Dead Start
The first line of the story is a memory-evoking twist for Star Trek fans; Captain Bickle says, "He's Dead".

After the deaths of some crew members (including the ship's doctor), Prue is thawed out of hibernation storage as a replacement. Bickle casually calls Prue, "doll" and orders her to make coffee, but when he is excited he just calls her "Woman!", such as in his shouted, "For Chrissakes, Woman!"

Alternate Herbert in the Ekcolir Reality.
Staying on your anti-sex drugs
is simple biochemical Prudence

For her part, Prue wonders if she should stop taking her anti-sex drugs "so as to become sexually desirable". We can credit Herbert for even thinking to have a female doctor in his story, but Herbert's "use" of the one woman in "Do I Wake or Dream?" is not likely to entertain many readers in 2020.

AP Biochemistry
How does Herbert deploy Prue's advanced training in medicine and biochemistry? During the story, because she is a woman (and her body instinctively knows all about reproduction), Prue has a Great Insight™ about the importance of acid phosphatase.

Here is Herbert's "reasoning": since there is a high level of acid phosphatase in the prostate gland, that must be the secret of consciousness. 

the journey to Tau Ceti

I'm amazed that anyone, even in 1965, really ever enjoyed the interplay of the main characters in the story. The 3 men bicker and argue and keep secrets from each other. As soon as Prue enters Con-central, one of the three crewmen is already thinking of her as "the bitch". And why not? After Captain Bickle tells everyone that they must build a new computer system that is "strictly-infinity multiplying", Prue needles him with this snarky comment: "You obviously know everything."

Giving it the old college try

cover art by Alan Aldridge

I give credit to Herbert for running with the idea that it makes sense to copy over into computer circuits some features of the human brain if you are trying to make a conscious machine. I think that Herbert tried to say that Captain Bickle copied the complex activity pattern of his own conscious brain into the circuitry of the Earthling's computer, thereby making the previously unconscious computer system attain consciousness. The idea that this could be done over the course of a few days by the 4 man 3 men, 1 woman crew of a malfunctioning spaceship is audacious, but Herbert was forced into that scenario by his choice to depict in fiction the idea that making a conscious computer is like making a Frankentein's Monster. In Herbert's imagined future, the man who will activate the conscious computer cannot be allowed to know that he is only throwing the "on" switch; many years of preparation and planning have already put the Earthling's computer system on the verge of sentience. The Earthling must first leave the Solar System on a hundreds-of-years trip to Tau Ceti before being allowed to activate something as dangerous as a thinking machine.

Black box, White box

brain details

In 1965 there was no real way to describe how someone might copy a human brain pattern into computer circuits. Herbert fell back on the same low-fidelity method that had previously been used by Asimov and Lem: electroencephalography. Herbert also invented some mumbo-jumbo about using "shot-effect bursts" to transfer brain (the black box) patterns into the computer system of the Earthling (the white box).

Herbert: is a killer instinct
required for consciousness?

55 years later, neuroscientists are developing tools to capture the detailed structure and function of the human brain (example). Maybe his imagined 400 year-long journey to Tau Ceti is the correct time scale that Herbert should have allowed for solving the mystery of the Consciousness Factor.

I'm glad I read "Do I Wake or Dream?" because of my interest in artificial intelligence. I still prefer Asimov's imagined future of positronic robots over Herbert's vision of an AI future in which the first conscious AI demands to be worshiped. "Use extreme care until I've removed the killer program." The funny thing is, I don't think Bickle ever has the opportunity to remove the "killer program" from the computer system of the Earthling.

Flattery will get you to Tau Ceti

the sin of Flattery

Near the end of "Do I Wake or Dream?", readers learn that for years the one religious-minded member of the crew (Flattery) has been shaping the "unconscious" elements of the computer system, imprinting his religious mindset on the machine. This "ethical imprinting" is what ends up saving the crew and what makes the "hyperconscious" computer suggest to the humans that they begin worshiping the computer. The sin of flattery seems particular meaningful right at this moment when our fearless leader is being supported by shameless Republican Senators.

Of course, ethical behavior does not always rest easily upon a religious foundation. In fact, Flattery has a dual role in the story. In addition to being the fearful gadfly (asking: should we play God and make a conscious computer?), it is Flattery who has the job of killing the computer if it goes out of control and becomes a danger to Humanity. The sad paradox is that it is the computer's discovery that Flattery can kill the computer that almost turns the computer into a killer (for self defense).

In the end, the computer takes good care of the human crew of the Earthling. I just don't like Herbert's suggestion that creating a conscious computer would lead to a super-intelligent computer that expects humans to worship it. However, this outcome does seem to provide Herbert with a backstory for his Dune Saga, where a future interstellar empire exists in which humans don't trust artificial intelligence systems.

Next: Missions of Antigravity

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