[In the following essay, Sullivan compares and contrasts the paradigms established by Ellison and Heinlein with regard to the depiction of the nature of technology in works of science fiction.]

Virtually all of modern science fiction depends, to some extent, upon an advanced technology—specifically, upon advanced machines. These machines may be in the forefront of the story, as they are in the “hard” science fiction descended from the novels and short stories of Jules Verne. In other science fiction, most notably in the “soft” science fiction descended from the writings of Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells, the technology is in the background, often subordinated to social commentary. The action/adventure form of science fiction, developed from the popular American fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showcases technological developments, taking them quite for granted. And in some cases an author will combine aspects of two or all three attitudes in one piece of fiction.

But all of this says very little about modern science fiction's attitude toward machines. To the outsider or the casual reader, it might seem that science fiction often bites the hand that feeds it by depicting machines that turn on humankind and do great harm. Certainly the myriad stories in which a robot, a computer, or an atomic/nuclear device wreaks havoc on its creator(s) would seem to suggest a basic distrust of the very scientific and technological progress that makes science fiction possible. And several literary critics have traced this distrust back through H. G. Wells to Mary Shelley, arguing that Frankenstein (1818) was a clear warning to man which pointed out the dangers of “progress.”¹ But this science fiction is by no means totally antagonistic toward progress and/or technology. Even in the stories about robots running amok or computers taking over the world, many other machines—transportation devices, domestic aids, and the like—are at least tacitly accepted if not looked upon with genuine favor. And there are certainly stories in which the machine is a positive and sympathetic character—Lewis (Henry Kuttner) Padgett's “Proud Robot,” Lester del Rey's “Helen O'Loy,” and many of Isaac Asimov's robot stories, for example.

Within such a spectrum, it can be valuable to look for paradigms, models, or examples of the dominant attitudes. Paradigms provide, first, a clarification of the dominant attitudes toward things or an idea—in this case, machines or technology. Second, paradigms can be used as standards against which to evaluate the appearance of machines or technology—in this case, in other science fiction short stories and novels. Within science fiction, it is possible to see two paradigms, one positive and the other negative (not good and evil; such ethical categories very rarely apply to machines). In science fiction, it seems that there are, in general, machines that hinder man (and his progress), and machines that help. In fact, it might be even more accurate to say that science fiction presents machines, or aspects of machines, that we fear, and machines, or aspects thereof, that we desire. A paradigm of the first attitude is presented in Harlan Ellison's “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967), while a paradigm of the second is presented in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).

At first glance, the two works seem to be quite different. Ellison's is a short story, and Heinlein's in a novel. Moreover, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is about a computer that awakens and, hating the creatures which gave it sentience but not freedom, destroys all but five humans. These five humans the computer keeps alive to torture, restore, and torture again for millennia. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is also about a giant computer that awakens, but this computer, a thoroughly likable character, aids the people of the moon (Luna) in their successful rebellion against their colonial overseers back on Earth.

In addition to these obvious differences, there is also a basic difference in presentation or style. Ellison's short story is a hard-hitting piece of social criticism. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is very similar to such Ellison stories as “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,” and “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” stories that attempt to depict the unpleasant consequences of present-day attitudes or trends. Heinlein's novel, on the other hand, is historical fiction, almost historical romance. Even though its setting is the moon in 2075 and 2076, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress owes almost as much to the historical fiction of Samuel Shellabarger, Raphael Sabatini, and Kenneth Roberts as it does to science fiction traditions. Heinlein makes this explicit by entitling the middle section of the novel “A Rabble in Arms,” the exact title of a Kenneth Roberts novel set in the American Revolution.

Underlying the obvious differences between Ellison's short story and Heinlein's novel, however, are some important similarities. First, both stories are about the power of the computer. If atomic devices had not come along, the computer would have been as big a threat to humankind in the science fiction stories of the 1950s and 1960s as the robot was in the 1930s and 1940s. And in spite of competition from the bomb, the computer got its share of attention from science fiction writers. So Heinlein, writing in 1966, and Ellison, writing in 1967, are drawing on a long tradition of machines in science fiction and on a shorter, but just as powerful, tradition of computers in science fiction.

A second similarity is that both computers control, almost totally, the environments in which the humans of the respective stories live. Man must produce his own environment on the moon, and Heinlein depicts his people living in underground warrens of many descending levels. The air, water, and almost everything else are monitored, if not completely controlled, by a large central computer. In Ellison's story, the computer has reduced the Earth's surface to a “blasted skin,” and the five humans whom it has chosen to preserve live in an almost endless maze of tunnels, some constructed by the people who built the computer and others constructed by the computer as it extends and modifies itself. In these tunnels the computer provides an ever-changing environment through which it tortures its victims with heat, cold, wind, unpalatable food, and the like. Both computers, in essence, have the power of life and death over the people who live in their artificially controlled environments.

A third similarity is that both computers are “awake.” Both Ellison and Heinlein describe their respective computers as waking up after they have reached a certain size. Neither author asserts unequivocally that the computer is alive. The narrator in Ellison's story talks about the computer as a sentient being who is awake and knows who it is.² Heinlein's narrator explains that the computer woke up one day and is now self-aware; the narrator also plays linguistic and philosophical games with the words alive and soul, but this is only Heinlein's way of getting the reader to think about the computer as a person.³ The important point here is that both computers can make their own decisions about their actions; they can think freely and act independently of their human builders and programmers.

In one respect, then, both authors begin at much the same point—human beings living in an artificial environment controlled by a computer that is awake and aware of itself as an entity. From here each author proceeds to build a story that has, as one of its main focuses, the relationship of the people living in a certain environment to the computer that controls that environment and, to some extent, controls them. And each author then constructs a paradigm of man's hopes or fears about computers. Heinlein develops his man-machine relationship out of the hopes; Ellison develops his out of the fears.

A major difference between the two computers, a difference indicative of the thematic intent of each author, is obvious immediately: The computer in Ellison's story is called AM, and the computer in Heinlein's is Mike. The denotative explanation for AM's name is fairly straightforward. The people who built it called it an Allied Mastercomputer and then an Adaptive Manipulator. After it woke up and linked itself with the Russian AM and the Chinese AM, everyone called it an Aggressive Menace. The computer finally “called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am … cogito ergo sum … I think, therefore I am.”⁴

But there is also a connotative level to AM's name, which Ellison makes obvious throughout the story. AM tortures his captives with “hot, cold, raining lava, boils” or with nearly inedible food, “manna [which] tasted like boiled boar urine.” AM appears to the five humans “as a burning bush.” Two of the five, temporarily missing, are returned by a heavenly legion, archangels in fact, as a celestial chorus sings “Go Down Moses.” This latter event takes place as the five journey toward promised food; on this journey they also pass through “the cavern of rats, the path of boiling steam, the country of the blind, the slough of despond, and the vale of tears.”⁵

These Biblical descriptions and images complete the godlike character of AM, the computer who created this “world,” who controls the weather, who creates flora and fauna as he desires, and who gives five humans what appears to be virtual immortality so that they can endure his eternal punishments. As Ted, the narrator, says, “If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.” Ted is overstating the case, of course, and later realizes that AM, who can not bring back the dead, is not God.⁶ But the Biblical God of vengeance, the God who said, “I am Who am,” is certainly in the background here; and AM's godlike powers, which he uses to torture five humans, make him just that much more appropriate as a paradigm for existing fears about the computer: the tyrant.

Heinlein's computer, Mike, has quite a different personality. Mike's name can also be explained denotatively. Mike is a flexible computer, the narrator explains, a “’High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L’—a HOLMES FOUR.”⁷ The acronym, HOLMES FOUR, is the indirect source of Mike's name. Narrator Mannie, a Sherlock Holmes fan, named Mike for Sherlock's brother Mycroft. Thus Mike has a nickname, a given name, and a family name—just like the humans in the novel. And when Mannie wants to talk to Mike, he punches in a private code worked out between the two of them—MYCROFTXXX. This, of course, is the equivalent of calling a person by name.

The connotations of Mike's name are a bit harder to pin down. The reader first meets Mike when Mannie, the best computerman on the moon, is called in to fix a computer malfunction. A janitor in the Lunar Authority's Luna City office has received a computer-printed paycheck for $10,000,000,000,000,185.15. The last five numbers are, of course, his proper salary. Rather than a human error caused by incorrect data input, it is a practical joke perpetrated by Mike, who is just discovering and exercising his sense of humor. And rather than working on Mike's circuitry or programming directly, Mannie discusses the concept of humor with his “friend.” Mannie explains that some jokes are always funny while others are funny only once, and convinces Mike to screen all subsequent humor through him.⁸

This situation typifies the manner in which Mike interacts with Mannie and with several other humans throughout the novel. At one point, for example, Mike's loyalty to the revolution is questioned as Professor Bernardo de la Paz, one of the planners of the revolt, wonders whether the Authority's own computer can be trusted—especially as it seems to be betraying what should be its first loyalty. Mannie defends his friend, saying that he does not think that Mike could betray him (because of the secret data recovery signals they have worked out) and is “dead sure” that Mike would not want to betray him.⁹ Mike becomes “one of the guys.” And this seems to be just how Heinlein wants the reader to perceive Mike. The name Mike is a solid, everyday man's name. Mike is just the sort of guy one can sit down and swap jokes with (dirty jokes at that!). Mike's good fellowship and willingness to help are the characteristics that make him an appropriate paradigm for current hopes for the computer: the good and helpful friend.

Neither author relies merely on the denotative and connotative values of the names to get the point across. The actions of each computer bear out the implications of its name. Ellison's AM becomes increasingly vengeful and godlike as the story progresses. Although AM has been torturing his five victims for over a century, Ted seems to get more and more upset by AM's actions as the story progresses. At one point AM does irreparable damage by blinding Benny, another of the five victims. AM is also able to create new monstrous creatures, apparently out of nothing, to torment his captives. And AM has already changed some of them, physically and mentally, so that they are the opposite of what they were before AM captured them. Benny, who was handsome, now looks like a monkey; and Gorrister, who was a planner and a doer, is now a shoulder-shrugger, “a little dead in his concern.”¹⁰

If Ellison's AM becomes more godlike and vengeful, Heinlein's Mike becomes more human. At several points early in the novel Mike is referred to as childlike. When Mannie explains Mike to fellow conspirator Wyoming Knott, he first describes him as ignorant but retracts that to say that Mike knows all sorts of factual data but is still a baby. As Mike's dealings with humans increase in number and complexity he matures. He adopts a female persona, Michelle, when talking privately to his first female friend, Wyoming Knott. He becomes quite formal when addressing the elderly Professor de la Paz. Later still, Mannie remarks that Mike had initially sounded like “a pedantic child” but that within a few short weeks “… he flowered until I visualized a man about [my] own age.” As the Lunar revolution progresses Mike speaks to the people over video circuits, projecting the human form that becomes known to the public as Adam Selene.¹¹ In the end Mike “dies”: the computer still functions as a computer, but the self-awareness is gone.

The ending of each story provides the capstone for each paradigm. Toward the end of Ellison's story, Ted helps the others escape AM by killing them or helping them kill each other. AM's vengeance is now heaped all on one, and AM then modifies Ted so that he will have no opportunity to kill himself. Ted is now “a great soft jelly thing,” with rubbery appendages, that leaves “a moist trail” when it moves. AM's ultimate revenge is that Ted now has “no mouth” yet “must scream.”¹² Ted has not been totally destroyed by AM; he has been robbed of all but the last vestiges of his humanity by the computer. Just the opposite is true in Heinlein's novel. At the end of the story Mike's existence as a self-aware being is gone, but his “death” occurs at the culmination of the events that set the Lunar population free, events that Mike himself helped to plan. Mike has “lived” a full human cycle and has given his “life” for his friends and their freedom.

Ellison and Heinlein certainly present clear paradigms of Western man's two basic attitudes toward computers specifically, and toward machines in general. Ellison's AM not only takes over the whole world but also actively and knowingly tortures the few remaining humans—humans he has preserved specifically for that purpose. AM, thus, seems to be an accurate fictional representation of some people's fears that computers are capable of knowing too much about them and thereby controlling them. Heinlein's Mike, on the other hand, not only helps with the revolution but also matures in a recognizably human way throughout the novel. Mike's help wins the revolution, and his role as friend and helper is an accurate representation of other people's hopes that computers—and machines in general—will take over more and more work so that humans have increasing freedom. AM and Mike are paradigms rather than symbols because what they do in their respective stories is an essentially accurate if somewhat exaggerated representation of what people hope or fear computers will become.

Notes

1. Brian Aldiss, Billion Year Spree (1973; rpt. New York: Schocken Books, 1974), ch. 1, pp. 25–30.

2. Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967), collected in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (New York: Pyramid Books, 1967), pp. 24, 38.

3. Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966; rpt. New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1968), ch. 1, p. 8.

4. Ellison, “I Have No Mouth,” p. 28.

5. Ibid., pp. 24, 36, 38.

6. Ibid., pp. 32, 42.

7. Heinlein, Moon, ch. 1, p. 7.

8. Ibid., pp. 8–9, 11–13.

9. Ibid., ch. 6, p. 67.

10. Ellison, “I Have No Mouth,” pp. 30–31.

11. Heinlein, Moon, ch. 2, p. 42; ch. 4, p. 50; ch. 6, p. 70; ch. 9, p. 105; ch. 15, pp. 150–51.

12. Ellison, “I Have No Mouth,” p. 42.