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They, Robots

© Robert Davis

With the attention being given to the recent movie, I, Robot, which nevertheless was only "suggested by" Isaac Asimov's short story collection of the same name, I thought I would focus a bit of attention on one of my own favorite works in science fiction, one in a similar vein and that I regret is not nearly well-known enough. I am speaking of Jack Williamson's The Humanoids.

Asimov, of course, governed his robots using a hierarchy of three laws. Williamson, on the other hand, gave his humanoid "mechanicals" a Prime Directive: "to serve and obey, and guard men from harm." The problems that run rife through such a formulation are, perhaps, obvious to anyone with a slightly suspicious bent; and the directive to "guard men from harm" was beautifully taken to its agonizing extreme in the novel's precursor short story, With Folded Hands.

Yet the humanoids are not malicious, not violent, not the instruments of a dastardly conspiracy. They are simply carrying out a philosophy of service and protection, coming as they do from a distant world and here to perform a mission, and there are many individuals who do not actually chafe under them. The reader's sympathies may lie with the resisters of the Prime Directive, but the number of those who happily submit is so great, and their characters so unremarkably normal, that one has to wonder if it is a mistake not to submit to the humanoids. That question, which persists through the entire novel, is truly the greatest sign of Williamson's genius.

The other important device, which is actually a tool wielded by the humanoids, is the drug euphoride. Essentially, the humanoids treat anyone who forcibly resists them as suffering from mental illness, and provide drug therapy to bring them around to an equilibrium state in which they can be happy under the Prime Directive. Is it therapy, or is it brainwashing? Looking at the difference between colleagues Clay Forester and Mark Ironsmith--the former a resister, the latter a happy...what to call him? Servant? Or master?--it is difficult to judge whether Forester would not be better off simply to give in, whether Ironsmith has been railroaded with euphoride, or whether he has simply "seen the light."

Williamson masterfully builds the suspense and the mystery to an astonishing climax, and the questions he has so intricately constructed do not admit of pat answers. "To serve and obey, and guard men from harm." This is the mission of the sleek black androids from distant Wing IV, and much less than simply trying to stop them from carrying it out, we must decide whether carrying it out might not be the right thing for them to do.

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