You Must be Joking

In the Ekcolir Reality.    Original
cover art by Frank Paul and see this.

I'm currently writing a new science fiction story called "The Alastor Network" which is part of my on-going effort to explore the origins of human telepathy. Why do I expend so much effort in this task? I blame Isaac Asimov. In the previous millennium, when Asimov wrote about his telepathic robots, he asked readers to accept the idea that robot telepathy arose by chance, as a kind of mutation in the positronic circuits. Actually, he loved that idea so much that he wrote at least two stories depicting two different chance events that resulted in robot telepathy. 

 

Mutation

Asimov's mind was shaped in the 1920s and 1930s. It can be argued that the origin of science fiction as a distinct literary genre began in the late 1920s. Also at that time, Hermann Joseph Muller became famous for his discovery that x-rays can cause genetic mutations and ever since, there has been no shortage of science fiction stories about mutants.

Intuition. A horse that Asimov could never stop whipping was the idea that some people have vast quantities of "intuition", a cognitive ability to simply know what should be done without even knowing why. The first time I encountered Asimov's infatuation with intuition may have been when I read Earth Is Room Enough, back in the 1970s. In that collection of stories was "Jokester", a fun little 12 page tale that is part of Asimov's Multivac series.

Originally published in 1956, "Jokester" is a story that I retained fresh and alive in my memory for almost fifty years. I recently read the story as it was first printed in the December issue of Infinity Science Fiction. I was saddened to see how poorly typeset that version of the story was and I can't recommend reading that version (PDF). Luckily the story has been widely anthologized.

click image to enlarge

The original version of "Jokester" was published with some internal magazine art provided by Robert Engle, which is shown to the right on this page. All but one of the characters in the story is shown in this illustration. The three men are: 1) the titular 'Jokester' himself, the Grandmaster Meyerhof, 2) the computer analyst Whistler and 3) an administrator named Trask. Also shown is Multivac, the ginormous computer that Asimov imagined for future times in a Reality where the transistor was never put onto lithographically-generated microscale computer chips.

Yes, Grandmaster Meyerhof has magical intuition and is one of only a dozen such Grandmasters of computing. Nobody on the Multivac project staff is allowed to question the Grandmasters' choices when they ask questions of the oracle-like Multivac. 

 

Feminine Intuition

Asimov wanted his readers to imagine a future time in which all of the obvious questions for scientific investigation had already been asked and answered. Now it is up to Meyerhof and his fellow Grandmasters to use their intuition to push forward scientific advancement. 

One of the best things about "Jokester" is that it is short. By making use of the "magical intuition" plot device, Asimov does not need to come up with a logical reason for anything that happens in the story. In fact, you could argue that "Jokester" is flat-out fantasy, not science fiction. In any case, the story is short and funny, so it is easy to forgive Asimov for how he constructed the story.

Nobody in the whole world is allowed to question the choices of the Grandmasters, so of course the story begins with Whistler questioning the decision of Meyerhof to question Multivac about the origins of jokes. Whistler advances the idea that Meyerhof wants to turn Multivac into a source of new jokes that he can tell to his buddies.

First Contact

Original cover art by Ed Emshwiller

I love science fiction stories about first contact with space aliens, particularly stories that avoid the usual Hollywood approach of depicting silly alien invasions. What I like most about "Jokester" is that it is a first contact story in which humans discover that they have long been under observation by aliens. That is the same premise used in my Exode Saga, and I certainly owe a lot to Asimov for the unusual ways that he found to include space aliens in his stories.

I don't really want to reveal anything more about "Jokester". Read it for yourself and I suspect you will still remember it 50 years from now.

Related Reading: Telepathy and Humor

   See also: fictional mutation by cosmic rays

    and: on old Asimov telepathy story from 1941

Next: part 5 of "The Alastor Network"

visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers