The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (54 page)

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with almost one hundred per cent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis.”
⁴⁰³

This special situation that we find ourselves in is a unique thought-experiment that tests the relative understanding, power and reality-structures of robot and man. We don’t quibble about how we happened to arrive here. We accept it so that we may have the pleasure of seeing this game of comparisons played through to its conclusion.

But why is it such a pleasure? The fact is that we experience this story in a curious double fashion. Subjectively, we may be trapped in a pocket universe, a closed situation, with absolutely no way to prove which ordering of reality is actually so. Objectively, however, we stand outside the confines of the story and look upon it with our own knowledge of human science and society, and our previous experience of SF stories in which robots were designed and space stations constructed.

We assume we
know
which side is really right—despite Cutie’s preternatural self-confidence and Powell’s strange aura of doubt. And it is this special knowledge that allows us to find amusement in the sight of a Powell burying his face in his trembling hands, or a Donovan beating the air impotently with his fists in a fit of frustration.

We can afford to chuckle when Cutie comes to recognize the solar station’s energy converter as “the Master,”
⁴⁰⁴
and the lesser robots of the station all acknowledge Cutie as “the Prophet.”
⁴⁰⁵
Cutie and his cohorts are no old-time cosmic threat like A. Merritt’s Metal People, and we know it. We can have confidence that they aren’t going to go raging off and attempt to take over the universe in the name of the Master.

What Cutie does do is bar the two men from the station’s control room and engine room as deluded lesser beings whose function has been superseded. But Powell and Donovan know that an electron storm is on its way which will certainly disturb the energy beam to Earth. Unless precise control is maintained, the beam will go out of focus and hundreds of square miles of planet will be incinerated.

If they don’t regain control of the situation, a major boo-boo is likely to occur for which Powell and Donovan will be held responsible. But nothing they can say or do—including assembling another robot while Cutie looks on—will serve to shake the robot’s firm faith in his religion of perfect robotic rationality:

Donovan was half in tears. “He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.”

“No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a
reasoning
robot, damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that. . . . You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the right postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”
⁴⁰⁶

However, when the electron storm has come and gone, Powell and Donovan discover that the energy beam to Earth has been kept in perfect focus all the while. Even though Cutie may not be willing to acknowledge the existence of Earth, but prefers to believe that he has simply been keeping “ ‘all dials in equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master’ ”
⁴⁰⁷
—nonetheless, the robot has performed the job he was designed to do.

Donovan continues to be upset that Cutie should be so persistent in his delusions, but Powell now knows better. He says, “ ‘Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments and graphs. That’s all
we
ever followed.’ ”
⁴⁰⁸

Powell has come to a recognition that as long as Cutie handles the job he was made for, and does it perfectly, it doesn’t really matter
what
the robot believes. Since human purposes ultimately rule, the apparent threat of robotic rebellion is not actually a threat at all.

Powell is still capable of being stung by Cutie’s contempt and pity. But so fundamentally reconciled to the facts of the situation has he grown that his last words to Donovan are a suggestion that later QT models be brought here to learn Cutie’s belief system before they take up their posts—as though he believes that this would benefit their effectiveness of operation. And when he and Donovan are finally relieved from duty aboard the space station by two other humans, Powell is able to grin up his sleeve at the thought of these guys trying to cope with Cutie, but he doesn’t think it necessary to warn them about what they will be facing.

Donovan, however, leaves the station still cursing under his breath at Cutie and turning his back to avoid having to deal with him. His sense of ordinary human reality has been sufficiently shaken that his final words to Powell are, “ ‘I won’t feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet—just to make sure it’s really there.’ ”
⁴⁰⁹

And it does remain a fact that the question of relative truth has not really been settled. Cutie may well do things that humans think desirable in something of the same way that a human might have done them—but his personal belief system certainly hasn’t been refuted. Believing his own beliefs, he has been able to run the solar station as effectively or more effectively than the humans did believing theirs. Within the robot’s sphere of autonomy, it seems certain that things will continue to be done according to his frame of reference. And any humans who enter Cutie’s domain are going to have to learn to recognize this and come to terms with it.

“Reason” is a story that at first appears to be about the dangers posed by a wrong-thinking robot. If that were really the problem, however, then the solution would be to straighten out the kinks in robotic thinking, perhaps by the expedient of showing QT robots some of the sights of Earth before they are taken off to serve aboard space stations. It surely wouldn’t be to bring still more robots here to learn delusions firsthand from Cutie.

A better interpretation of “Reason” is that it is about the need for overdirective men to learn to relax and allow the robot to get on with the job he has been designed to do—according to his own terms.

Taken in this light, “Reason” may be seen as a message meant for John Campbell. As plainly as Asimov could bring himself to say it, this story said:
Different people live according to different structurings of reality, all founded on different premises, and all equally unprovable. But it is perfectly possible to call a goal by different names and still have it be the same goal. If you will just stand back and let me get on with it, I will do things your way. But I reserve the right to think them my way.

Was Campbell equal to a challenge of this kind? Indeed he was. Asimov submitted “Reason” to the editor on November 18, 1940. And just four days later, he received a check in the mail from Street & Smith. Not only did Campbell ask for no revisions, but he even went so far as to tell Asimov that he had seriously considered awarding him a bonus for this story.

Asimov’s display of rebellion and original thought was everything that Campbell could have been hoping to see from the youngster through those two long years of patient personal instruction. The Asimov revealed by “Reason” was the kind of writer Campbell treasured most—the man who could do things Campbell’s way, but who was also determined to think things out for himself.

It was as though the writing of “Reason” by Asimov and its acceptance by Campbell together constituted the forging of a working contract. Effectively, the writer would strive to give Campbell
exactly
what he wanted—except for any case where he happened to have his own convictions about things. And the editor would love and cherish Asimov both for his originality and for his spunk as a rebel within the law.

Two things helped to make this arrangement between Asimov and Campbell work. One was that—with the rare exception of “Nightfall”—the ideas that the two men were playing around with and building upon were Asimov’s to begin with, not Campbell’s. And the other was that when Asimov did take a suggestion of Campbell’s and twist it into something that he found inoffensive, it was almost always done in such a skillful way that Campbell found the change inoffensive as well.

The last important thing we should note about the accommodation the two men reached is that it was tacit, no more than an unspoken working agreement. It was nothing that Asimov could ever feel completely certain about.

It wasn’t that Campbell was incapable of reaching explicit understandings with his most valued authors. In the course of 1941, Robert Heinlein would, tactfully but effectively, force the acceptance of everything he might submit to Campbell by telling the editor, “I’ll send you a story from time to time . . . until the day comes when you bounce one. At that point we’re through. Now that I know you personally, having a story rejected by you would be too traumatic.”
⁴¹⁰

And during 1941, Campbell would decide to write to A.E. van Vogt in Canada and throw
Astounding
wide open to him. So much work was Campbell willing to contract to buy from him that van Vogt turned himself into a one-man factory all through World War II, toiling “from the time I got up until eleven o’clock at night, every day, seven days a week, for years,”
⁴¹¹
just to keep Campbell supplied with stories.

As time passed, Asimov would eventually come to be ranked alongside Heinlein and van Vogt as a major writer of SF—even in Campbell’s eyes. What is more, so in tune would he and Campbell become that there would not be a word of fiction that Isaac Asimov would write from the beginning of 1943 to the end of the decade—with the exception of one novel written at the request of another editor—that John Campbell would not buy and print.

But Asimov would never be offered carte blanche by Campbell, and he himself would never feel entitled to deliver ultimatums or demand guarantees. Even though Asimov might eventually become capable of addressing the editor with an occasional uncomfortable “John,” in his heart he would always regard his mentor as “Mr. Campbell”
⁴¹²
and treat him accordingly.

Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that despite Asimov’s secret impulses to rebel and Campbell’s lack of guarantees, a new working relationship had been established between the two men after “Reason.” This may be seen in the fact that when Asimov came to visit Campbell at his office one month after turning in “Reason,” both men had been giving thought to the implications of the story.

Campbell had been thinking about one particular passage in “Reason” that he found troubling. At the direst moment in the story, Donovan suggests that it might be possible to neutralize Cutie by squirting concentrated nitric acid in his joints. But Powell answers, “ ‘Don’t be a dope, Mike. Do you suppose he’s going to let us get near him with acid in our hands—or that the other robots wouldn’t take us apart if we
did
manage to get away with it?’ ”
⁴¹³

John Campbell was a person who enjoyed nothing more than to confront a listener with some outrageous idea and dare him to refute it, so he could really appreciate Cutie’s discomfiting arguments—just as long as he felt certain that Cutie would perform his duties and injure no one. But to Campbell, the kind of robots who might disassemble human beings as an act of retribution presented a problem that cried out for solution. And he discerned the answer lurking in Asimov’s previous robot story, “Robbie”: “ ‘He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine—made so.’ ”

Asimov, for his part, came to this story conference with the idea for another robotic problem story. What if, through some accident of manufacture, a robot should prove to be telepathic, able to read human minds? He says, “Again, Campbell became interested and we talked it over at length—what complications would arise out of robotic telepathy, what a robot would be forced to lie about, how the matter could be resolved, and so on.”
⁴¹⁴

In the course of this discussion, Campbell found occasion to raise the issue that had been bothering him, and the grounds for its solution. Characteristically, however, the editor didn’t state his true concerns in any direct and open way, but rather elected to phrase them as another Campbellian dictum. He said:

“Look, Asimov, in working this out, you have to realize that there are three rules that robots have to follow. In the first place, they can’t do any harm to human beings; in the second place, they have to obey orders without doing harm; in the third, they have to protect themselves, without doing harm or proving disobedient.”
⁴¹⁵

Asimov would take up these operating principles proposed by Campbell and give them formal expression in his stories as the Three Laws of Robotics, phrasing them this way:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws

The Three Laws of Robotics would become the basis for seven stories that Asimov would write for Campbell during the Forties. In 1950, these stories—together with “Robbie” and “Reason,” rewritten to bring them into conformity with the Three Laws—would be collected under the title
I, Robot
. And Asimov would go on to write many more stories and novels incorporating these fundamental principles of robotic operation.

In later years, Asimov would more than once attempt to credit Campbell with responsibility for inventing the Three Laws. But Campbell would deny it, saying, “ ‘No, Asimov, I picked them out of your stories and your discussions. You didn’t state them explicitly, but they were there.’ ”
⁴¹⁶

And that would be the truth—as far as it went. What it would overlook was the role played by Campbell’s own urgent desire that human control be established over the robot.