Brian Aldiss
English writer of general fiction and science fiction.
Amid all the triumphs of our civilization yes, and amid the crushing problems of overpopulation too it is sad to reflect how many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them; he will always answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.
For the future, we plan more models, male and female some of them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! of more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.
Not only will they possess their own computer, capable of individual programming; they will be linked to the World Data Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be banished forever!
"I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!"
"You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you."
Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I talk to her?"
"You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had you."
"She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely."
Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question:
Where was "here"?
He shut that one down sharply.
Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.
My wife Margaret and I sold our house to Sir Roger Penrose and his wife... Talking to Roger, I found we both agreed that AI, as they call it, is not going to be achieved by present-day machines."Artificial Intelligence" that makes it sound simple, but what you're really talking about is artificial consciousness, AC. And I don't think there's any way we can achieve artificial consciousness, at least until we've understood the sources of our own consciousness. I believe consciousness is a mind/body creation, literally interwoven with the body and the body's support systems. Well, you don't get that sort of thing with a robot.
Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.
There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers for brains plastic things without life, super-toys but we have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh.
That first novel of mine, Non-Stop, is directly attributable to Heinlein. His "Common Sense" seemed to me such a good story, but bereft of any human feelings. I thought long about that story, and then I thought how wonderful it would be to write about a spaceship in which people have been imprisoned for generations and to put in something of the human feeling. So that novel is directly attributable to Heinlein. I thought, in my youthful arrogance, that I could do it better I didn't! I thought I could do it differently, and I think I did do it differently. And I suppose that on the whole, I've concentrated on doing things differently ever since.
A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought
all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.
In the extraordinary ancestral compost heap of your unconscious mind, I have burrowed too long.
"Teddy I suppose Mummy and Daddy are real, aren't they?"
Teddy said, "You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows what 'real' really means. Let's go indoors."
"First I'm going to have another rose!" Plucking a bright pink flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on the pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded him of Mummy.
They came, by what means he did not know, from outside, the vast abstraction that none of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture of a starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled, and then swiftly erased it. Such ideas did not conform with the quiet behavior of his companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?
The house was a rambling affair. It had few windows, and such as there were did not open, were unbreakable and admitted no light. Darkness lay everywhere; illumination from an invisible source followed one's entry into a room the black had to be entered before it faded. Every room was furnished, but with odd pieces that bore little relation to each other, as if there was no purpose for the room. Rooms equipped for purposeless beings have that air about them.
"You and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?"
The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are real, David." It specialized in comfort.
The day of the android has dawned.
Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down...
Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!
Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. Its patriotic to overconsume.
One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.
Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.
"Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't real things?"
The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."
"I wonder if time is good. I don't think Mummy likes time very much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by her. Is time real, Teddy?"