Thinking Machine

There are no swords in science fiction

I like to think of Astounding magazine, during the time while edited by John Campbell, as a bastion of science fiction. My personal preferences lean towards science fiction stories that are written by people with training in science, or at least an interest in science. However, many science fiction stories are weak on their science and some contain absurd pseudoscience and fantasy elements.

 

After about a year with Campbell editing Astounding, a companion magazine, Unknown, was launched and it could publish stories with more of a fantasy flavor. However, there were always "soft science fiction" stories in Astounding that were written by authors with no training in science.

 

Physical Weakness

how to publish in Astounding

Campbell's personal linkages to science were in the physical sciences, the hardcore domain of mathematics and equations. One path to being published in Astounding by Campbell was to include an equation in your story. Shown in the image to the left is part of a story published by Campbell that I suspect was accepted for publication only because it included a few equations.

 

When dealing with stories that touch on the domain of the life sciences, Campbell seemed to prefer pseudoscience to biology. I've previously blogged about Campbell's interest in fictional science and his enthusiasm for psionics. So, another path into Campbell's good graces and being published in Astounding was to include some kind of astounding "mind powers" in your story.

mind over matter
interior art by Vincent Napoli

The Case of John D. MacDonald

MacDonald was trained for business, but he was not a good fit for corporate America. After WWII, he became a writer. His first story in Astounding was called "Cosmetics" (February 1948). The setting for "Cosmetics" is a time in the future when each home has an "autocosmeton". The autocosmeton is even more popular than the orgasmatron because it allows you to adjust your appearance to the whims and desires of your lover.

MacDonald was careful to provide his readers with a fictional science account of how his imagined autocosmeton works. First going on the market in 1998, the autocosmeton harnessed the fantastic powers of psychic surgery and was powered by hypnosis. 

shape-shifting

I love the idea of a future in which people can use advanced technology to "shape-shift" and morph their physical appearance, but I can't take seriously a story such as "Cosmetics" in which such morphing is accomplished by "concentration of the psychic processes" and a human body can be completely rebuilt from the inside out in three hours without even a bit of residual discomfort or inflammation.

Where did MacDonald go in "Cosmetics" with his fantasy autocosmeton? According to MacDonald's vision of the future, if people could casually change their appearance then all human capacity for innovation and artistic creation would vanish: "no invention, no art, no creative thought". 

 

And, perhaps most appallingly:

The End of Eternity

"A hundred years ago we thought we could reach the stars... the sad little men of fifty or sixty who were sweating out the details in labs suddenly discovered that they could be twenty again." 

 

So now, in MacDonald's imagined future, the advance of human civilization has come to an end.

A few years later, Isaac Asimov wrote his time travel novel The End of Eternity in which a different technological advance prevented Humanity from reaching the stars. For Asimov, the roadblock was time travel technology. As long as time travel existed, humans never bothered developing interstellar space travel technology.

the Laws

I can't take Asimov's roadblock any more seriously than I do MacDonald's, but I am fascinated by the idea of futures that do not involve a technological singularity.

 

I have to wonder if Asimov was influenced in any way by MacDonald's story "Cosmetics". I also have to wonder to what extent MacDonald was influenced by Asimov. In "Cosmetics", MacDonald included the idea that the autocosmeton was carefully programmed with fail-safes that prevented it from doing harm to people, which sounds like Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

image source

Robots

Apparently the first published story by MacDonald was called "G-Robot" and I've allowed myself to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of MacDonald (Joanna MacDonald) wrote the first science fiction story about positronic robots in 1936.

As described here, MacDonald published a story called "Nicky and the Tin Finger" in 1948 that included a robot. I've never read that story, but I suspect it was a kind of joke story that made no attempt to seriously consider how a robot might be built. Given the educational background of MacDonald, I'm not surprised to find jokes in his "science" fiction stories rather than serious attempts to imagine the effects of imaginary technologies on society.

Galaxy 1951

For my story called "Final Change", I imagine that that Joanna MacDonald was designed by Grean the Kac'hin so as to be the mind clone of Mary. After Joanna was taken from Earth into the Hierion Domain, she could use her telepathic link to Mary and share information from the future about hierion physics.

 

While still living on Earth, Joanna was able to write science fiction stories about positronic robots because of her telepathic link to her nanoscopic replicoid in the Hierion Domain.

Nonscience Fiction

Psionic Escape

Another example of MacDonald's "science" fiction in our Reality is the 1951 story "Common Denominator". For that story, MacDonald casually imagined a future with various advanced technologies including interstellar travel and even an alien-derived "static-clean" device that when used meant you never again had to dust your house. Another alien technology: a robotic bunny rabbit that thrilled the hunters of Earth. You could blast the bunny and then it repaired itself and you could hunt it again.

Thinking Machine Project

Isaac Asimov wrote several stories about the development of computing and robot technology including the 1945 story "Escape!" Asimov never tried to provide any details and simply told readers that "positronic brains" were the key to success in making intelligent machines. 

 

artificial intelligence

Earlier this year I commented on Frank Herbert's 1965 artificial intelligence Sci Fi story "Do I Wake or Dream?", which was a public display of floundering over the problem of how to achieve human-like artificial intelligence. 

 
Herbert gave readers a hand-wave and imagined some sort of mystical "solution" that -rather than simply allow for man-made human like machine intelligence- instead created a machine with god-like powers. Here we are in 2020 and still nobody knows how to endow a computer with a human-like mind.

 

1948 science research

In 1948 John D. MacDonald published "The Mechanical Answer". MacDonald imagined that there could be a Manahatten Project-like attempt by the military to develop a thinking machine.

Is there anything worse than the Sci Fi nerdy inventor who casually steps into his workshop and invents an intelligent robot, or interstellar space drive or a time machine? Yes, there is. When the chief administrator (in "The Mechanical Answer", Joe Kayden) of the floundering government-run project suddenly has the key insight for how to complete the technology-development project.

 

interior art by William Timmins

Lucky for Joe, he is not the first administrator of the Thinking Machine Project. He is appointed to the job after 1953, the point at which it had been discovered how to build a computer that could solve every mathematical problem. All you had to do was put the math problem on paper tape or punch cards and feed it into the super-duper Electronic Mechanical and Numerical Integrator and Calculator™. 

 

interior art by William Timmins

Then, with a bit more work, it was found how to make the super-duper calculating Machine use English. With all that "small stuff" in the past, the only remaining problem facing Joe is that the Machine is not creative; it can calculate and solve logic puzzles, but it can't be creative like humans. 

 

When he is installed as the new project director, Joe has no interest in the nuts and bolts of the Machine; he tells the technicians that he just wants to have some time to think about the problem. However, readers of "The Mechanical Answer" are never quite sure what Joe views as the real "problem". Mostly it seems to be that since he is now inside the super-secret Big Government Project he no longer gets to see his dear wife or talk to her.

image source

In 1969, Asimov published a story called "Feminine Intuition" in which he made fun of the idea that women can creatively solve hard problems using feminine intuition. I have to wonder if Asimov was influenced by "The Mechanical Answer" when he wrote "Feminine Intuition". 

 

MacDonald tells us that the key to Joe's prior success in running an automated factory has always been to explain his work-related problems to his wife (Jane; she's a housewife but she has technical training in neurology and psychology) and then take her advice about what to do. Now, even with their letters censored, Jane begins sending Joe hints about how to apply what is known about the human brain to the problem of making a thinking machine. Taking the hints, Joe sits down a reads a neurology textbook before bedtime.

Bard: Damit all!    Sharan:
We loose more rockets that way...
May 1950

Upon waking, good old Joe knows exactly how to make a creative computer by applying a few principles of biological neural networks to computer memory devices (something nobody but his wife ever thought of). After two and a half months of rewiring the computer as directed by Joe, suddenly the Machine can think like a human and answer questions posed to it in English like a self-aware genius, conveniently pre-loaded with all existing human knowledge.

The ending of "The Mechanical Answer" is very similar to what happens in Asimov's story "Escape". The Thinking Machine announces that the problem of how to travel to the stars can easily be solved with existing human knowledge. The Machine's brilliance also quickly ends the belligerent stand-off between the President of North America, the Dictator of Asia, the King of Africa and the Ruler of Europe. With military saber-rattling ended, tight security for the Thinking Machine Project is ended and Joe gets to re-unite with Jane (happy ending). 

 

I have to wonder if Asimov was influenced by "The Mechanical Answer" when he wrote his 1950 story "The Evitable Conflict" in which his computerized Machines with positronic brains also bring peace and economic stability to Earth.

 

original cover art by Herman Vestal

Sadly for us, the hard work of understanding how human brains store memories and learn continues. We are not yet to the point where we can make machines that have human-like minds.

Related Reading: the story "Noise Level" uses the same basic "solution" as does "The Mechanical Answer"

 

Next: MacDonald's 1950 story "Wine of the Dreamers"

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