ANDROID KILL FOR ME!

ANDROID KILL FOR ME!

Buried on my book shelves is a magazine entitled The Original Science Fiction Stories no 11 which mysteriously is undated. The style of the magazine and the presence of an ad for Mad magazine suggest the 50s. Sure enough, on consulting the magisterial The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by John Clute and Peter Nichols, it is listed as being published between 1953 and 1960. It features two well known writers - Ward Moore, who wrote one of the most famous known alteration of history novels called Bring the Jubilee, which is about the Confederate states winning the Civil War in the United States and the prolific Robert Silverberg –“There’s No Place like Space!” which has illustrations of space ‘babes’ attired in clinging translucent material affirming – if there was any doubt - that the magazine’s presumed readership was male.

Of relevance to this essay is a story called “Android, Kill For Me!” by Kate Wilhelm, an author unknown to me. However, the Encyclopedia  records that she has a substantive publishing record and was married to Damon Knight (not to be confused with Matt Damon). An android is often a humanoid-style robot though it should technically be made of organic material and be ‘grown” in some way. In short, an android is more properly an artificial man or person as opposed to a metallic or robotic one. However, sometimes an android has a metallic interior covered with flesh or flesh-like material whereas robots are visibly metallic.

In Wilhelm’s short story, the android is a Z model, the most advanced. The Z model nicknamed Zeke is like a multi-purpose servant – he can shop, play bridge, type out manuscripts (handy for a writer). The Zeke android is of the second variety – that is, he is humanoid, but has muscles made of steel and nylon rather than artificial flesh. In return for pushing over a statue that kills Helen’s evil husband, the android expects her embrace as a reward. We are spared the consummation.

Robots are more prominent than androids who didn’t figure in science fiction until Jack Williamson’s series The Cometeers, though they were earlier antecedents such as a novel published in 1886 called The Future Eve which features the familiar notion of a man falling in love with an android – in this case, an improved version of his wife. Two of the ancestors of the android or robot are Frankenstein’s monster who is a rather implausible “android” made of human parts stitched together and brought to life by electricity. Further back, around 1000 BC, an inventor called Yan Shi constructed a robot made of wood, leather, wax and lacquer but which allegedly contained a liver, gall, heart, kidney etc. The robot made the mistake of getting fresh with the ladies of the court so the inventor was obliged to pull it apart to show the king it was artificial.

In the 13^th century, there was the fabled machine made by Albertus Magnus which was reputed to talk and was made of mechanical parts (brass, leather, wax, and wood) so it was more likely to be an example of automata. Supposedly, Magnus (or alternatively, his pupil Thomas Aquinas) had it pulled apart because it talked too much! Magnus’s machine was more of a robot than an android though possibly of the humanoid type.

This machine impliedly appeared (or re-appeared) in a remarkable passage in Henry Miller’s Plexus (1953) but transmogrified into a real walking talking robot created by a mediaeval scholar “whose name is never recalled” but must surely be Albertus Magnus - a robot clever enough to irritate its creator with its vast learning so much so that the creator sought to destroy his own creation though failed to complete the task.

The tale of Picodiribibi is related by Caccicacci, a cultured gentleman who poses as a Florentine. Miller mentions in a prefatory note that the real model for this narrator never related the Picodiribibi story - hence it is Miller’s invention. It was by the way, originally published in the July 1950 issue of World Review, later published in the same year in New Directions 12 and in 1952 in the French edition of Plexus and then in English in 1953 by the famed Olympia Press. And it still reads well today.

Curiously, Miller has Caccicacci ask his listeners if they have ever read the private papers of Albertus Magnus (who presumably was the twelfth century creator of the said robot).This looks like historical association and forgetfulness at the same time – a process probably not unknown to Miller. The passage is rich in reference and invention and is more interesting and resonant than any other passage I have read about androids and robots. The text initially refers to Picodiribibi as a twelfth century robot but later refers to him as an android. The method of manufacture has by now been forgotten (!) by the gentleman who brought him into existence. The robot makes a journey to see the Pope but after a four hour conversation is assassinated whereupon (presumably) Picodiribibi passes into papal ownership. The justification? - “by now all Europe was aware that the Devil himself was seeking audience with his Holiness.  Thus does Miller casually assert that the manufacture (or creation) of such a superior simulacrum of humanity is evil which is the uneasy conclusion I also reached. Of course the attempt to produce life would lift our scientific endeavours to higher levels but the results are likely to be entities that could be used for evil or be evil. In just a few pages, Miller, using the voice of Caccicacci, not only considers the irritation and the evil of robots and androids then shifts to consider that these “monsters’ might still be alive, might have learned to reproduce mechanically; that we might create a being superior to Picodiribibi which leads to the question  –“Who would want power or knowledge if bathed in the perpetual glory of love?” - which is of course one of the oldest theological questions. Caccicacci triumphantly concludes that what he has been trying to say among is that we – humanity - should be “more alive”. In a sense, the loquacious Caccicacci sums up the futility of trying to “create” life – simulate it would be more accurate term. Thus does Miller magnificently cancel out the “hidden “ agenda of the robot/android scenario – to create “life” - when it us human beings who need to find ways to make ourselves more alive.

 

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Though the word robot first appeared in Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. in 1920, his robots were more like androids since they were grown and organic. (The word comes from the Slovak word robota meaning work.) To add to the confusion, Phillip K. Dick, who has been called the Shakespeare of science fiction by postmodern critic Fredrick Jamison, interchanges the meanings of robot and android (as does Henry Miller). However, a robot generally looks mechanical and metallic, whereas an android must be human enough to fool humans, even if its insides are metallic rather than organically grown. Arnold Schwarzenegger played an android of the outwardly fleshed, inwardly metallic type in The Terminator.  The android David in the recent Ridley Scott film Prometheus  (2012), brilliantly realised by actor Michael Fassbinder, is depicted as showing intellectual curiosity as well doing his best to assist his human companions when they are in danger. Bizarrely, when his head is torn off his body by an eight foot-tall ‘engineer’- a member of an alien race that actually created human life, but now seeks to destroy it - he remains able to speak. He becomes a talking head, zipped up a carry bag and transported to the stars, as a still useful and helpful guide. Ironically, the corporation commander of the space ship Prometheus played by Charlize Theron acts so coldly that the captain asks her if she is a robot! It must be assumed she is not as she suggests they retire to her cabin - presumably for coitus. Thus the film proffers a real human being who acts like a robot and an android, who despite  not having a taste for alcohol and not breathing seems more human than the “robotic” expedition corporation owner.

In the recent TV series Extant, the totally humanised/ humanoid son is called a “humanich” though he is an android of the Terminator type plus emotions and like a real human being reacts to his environment. He is described as a “life-like” robot which is an android. And in the Wikipedia summary he is dubbed a “humanoid robot” which in turn makes him an android. Unlike other androids that I have “encountered”, he is has the capacity to develop intellectually and emotionally. He is showered with love and gives back love – or is he just well programmed? 

The androids in the earlier Ridley Scott film Blade Runner were of the purely organic type. Like Harrison Ford, I wouldn’t have too much trouble falling in love with a “replicant” as good-looking as Sean Young though their memories and experience would be more limited than a human being. Sex dolls or love dolls are said to be getting more lively, though I have my doubts they will approach the standard of Stepford wives for some time to come - if ever. The present candidates seem more sophisticated automata than companionable androids. From a male perspective, this is presumably one of the long term aims – a womanly android who will make love to order. An android who is intelligent and capable could exceed the everyday help provided by a mere robot. An android who could be a companion for the lonely may find a place in a future society.

A robot or androidl that could think as well a human being and which had free will could will prove to be a threat.  Even without these faculties it would be programmed to kill as the Terminator films have made clear. You have been warned. If a robot is given free will what’s to stop it turning to hate? The three famous Asimovian laws of robotics were installed to avoid such contingency.  Androids and love dolls, get in line! However, as depicted in Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I believe androids are best kept on Mars. My favourite Android line was uttered by Lance Hendricksen in Aliens when he says, “I may be synthetic but I’m not stupid!”

Guess what? The smart phone geeks have manufactured a small rectangle of multi purpose metal - a dumb metallic mini “robot” they are calling an android. This is an outrageous shift in language  which adds conceptual confusion. Where’s the humanoid appearance? Some years earlier we had assembly line arms ambitiously dubbed as robots. Hence vacuum cleaners that can turn corners without human arms to guide them are being called robots and smart phones are being called androids. While neither in appearance nor function could these word shifts fool any old science fiction buff, it has bamboozled millions into accepting conceptual inaccuracy. Hordes of deluded customers make love through them or to them every day. One born every minute, they used to say.

A report in the NZ Herald on 13^th September states that New Zealand children are arriving at school unable to speak in sentences. And what is particularly alarming is the decline is in children “from all backgrounds”.  It is suspected that “gadgets” (take a bow, Android!) and parents not speaking enough are causing the problem. In other words the “android” is turning children into poorly programmed robots.

ANDROID KILL FOR ME!

 

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However, there is a more serious issue implicit in the contrast between robots and androids. A robot is a machine and as such can never approximate the richness of a human being even if it can out think and outsmart a human being in certain tasks. An android is a much more radical concept. If we can make a human being indistinguishable from ourselves we will have assumed a God-like mantel. I doubt that this is possible no matter how clever such simulacrums may appear. My feeling is the more human or humanoid we make robots or androids the closer we approach not God but the Devil.

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Captivating Description of an early Chinese “robot”:

 

"The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time... As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih (Yan Shi) executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, adhesive and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial... The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.