Jeffro's Space Gaming Blog

I had my hopes up for this one. After all, “With Folded Hands” is a bona fide super-classic short story. Yeah, sure. Isaac Asimov was onto something when he took the “Robot as Monster” trend of the pulp era and then turned it on its head with his three laws of robotics. But Jack Williamson was even more onto something significant when he managed to turn Asimov’s sterile and naive picture of robots on its head.

Who was ultimately more influential? You know, seriously– the guy that coined the term “Prime Directive” might have been a bigger deal. Personally, though, I just really hate robots. I hate them even more now that so called artificial intelligence has ruined pretty much everything. I really want a mega-classic science fiction novel where the robots finally get their comeuppance, but I hate to break it to you… The Humanoids is not it!

It sure sets you up to think that that is how it is going to play out. The action of the tale follows up that of “With Folded Hands” except it is set on a world that is on the verge of being subjected by these meddlesome busybody robots that won’t let anyone do anything remotely dangerous. They are even scarier this time around as not only do they eliminate entire professions wholesale as if they were suddenly inundated with mass quantities of H1B visa holders, but they also reflexively dope up anyone that looks as if they are even remotely “unhappy”. Shades of Prozac and ADHD meds!

Taking a page from another landmark Asimovian work, humanity’s last hope against these awful do-gooders that won’t even let people smoke or drink is a group of psionically powered misfits: a teleporter, a telekinetic, and a clairvoyant. Everything is set to play out like a typical action flick where the plucky good guys save the universe at the last moment. The suspense is terrific. It appears that the good guys only have the narrowest of chances!

But now… I actually have to spoil the whole book in order comment on just what needs to be said about this work. Forgive me. I know this is not how this should normally be done, but in this case… I absolutely have to make an exception.

First off… the protagonist is an uninspiring “delta”. He is an ordinary weakling with a slide rule that has found his place in life by being a workaholic. Unlike, say, Ursula Le Guin’s lead characters, this guy can associate with a child for several chapters and not come off like some kind of creepazoid. This is a credit to Williamson, who does not act like he is at all privy to any of the darker shenanigans which have plagued science fiction and its fandom at least since the late thirties. But there is more than one way to fall short. In this case– and it pains me to have to say this– but really… Williamson appears to have fallen prey to the sort of modernism that C. S. Lewis describes in The Abolition of Man. Judging from this novel, it appears to me that Williamson is a member of the group that Lewis termed “men without chests”.

Here’s why I say that. The protagonist stumbles into godlike superpowers. But he complete fails in his mission. All of his friends are captured and brainwashed by the evil robots. Worse, a guy that serves as a collaborator with the space equivalent of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere not only defeats the hero, but he also even takes his wife from him. The protagonist ends this climatic encounter throwing ineffectual punches while his wife tells him to just let her be happy with this traitor to humanity.

This absolutely crushing down beat is delivered just when the reader is primed for something a little closer to a genuine eucatastrophe. I am not even sure what Williamson was attempting to do here as he absolutely had the chance to lay down a mega-classic science fiction novel that could stand the test of time. As it is, I have to admit that The End of Eternity is a better novel– and that’s in spite of the fact that it is marred by the typical Asimovian gamma male protagonist. It’s just a better plotted story with a more satisfying conclusion that makes sense of everything that had puzzled you along the way.

Meanwhile, Williamson? He positively humiliates his protagonist in the worst way possible… and then he allows him to wake up a couple years later and just “understand” that the bad guys he was supposed to defeat actually had mankind’s best interests at heart all along. This is insulting, really. Particularly so for somebody that has had to witness first hand tacky AI’s ruining what used to be a moderately useful internet.

Jack Williamson is a nice guy who has a career that spans a great many decades. His entire body of work was called out on the justifiably infamous Appendix N list from the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide. Why exactly would he have fired the imagination of either Gary Gygax or one of his close collaborators? I can’t say! But I can tell you that it could not have been because of The Humanoids. It really should have been a first rate novel. In reality, Williamson ought not ever have revisited his brilliant short story “With Folded Hands” at all.

Disappointing!

I knew that this was one of Jack Williamson’s most famous stories. I knew that it had been adapted into a novel-length treatment and that Williamson’s peers had lavished it with undiluted praise. I knew that this was something I really ought to get around to reading sooner or later. What I didn’t know was just how much enjoyment I would get out of it.

It is indeed a classic-tier story that ought on to be on everyone’s shortlist. And no, I can’t offer any explanation for why this author and this work just vanished from all discussion in the years following his death. It’s stupid. And it ought not be so.

That it was written in 1947 ensures its baseline ethos to hail from the picture perfect 1950’s era suburban home and its happy nuclear family. That every bit of it is annihilated due to the import of initially harmless-seeming black humanoids is weirdly unsettling. First the entirely all too relatable protagonist loses his livelihood due to the arrival of these newcomers. Then he loses the ability to enjoy any of his or his family’s hobbies. Finally he loses the ability to criticize or comment on anything about the changes to his life which all are ostensibly to keep him happy.

It’s just too real.

It is fun to tick through the number of science fiction tropes which Williamson anticipates. He has here a very well executed rendering of Star Trek’s Borg and also the Dumarest series’ Cyclan. In a move which predicts both the internet and countless “Smart” devices, Williamson’s robots embody a shared consciousness which derives from an entire planet’s worth of computing power. On page after page, you will find yourself nodding as Williamson predicts some aspect of contemporary life which has long since become wearying for us. Heck, he was even decades ahead on the ruining of childhood by adults which are obsessed with bogus safety standards.

I am not sure what comfort there is in knowing that someone grasped that the future was going to be humiliating even eighty years ago. But hey, maybe you will find yourself surrounded by the sort of people that reflexively believe things that the AI tell them and that gloat about the coming of ridiculous AI girlfriends which will finally be able to give these guys the experience of being able to pretend that someone actually cares about them.

In that day which surely cannot be too terribly far off, I would like to imagine you remembering this post. I envision you shutting off your phone and your laptop and settling into an incredibly pleasant Sunday afternoon as you lose yourself in a classic science fiction work such as Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids. Ultimately, I foresee you recovering some dimly remembered piece of your own humanity– and perhaps even the resolve necessary to find a way to destroy these ugly and tacky machines which have ruined so much that was good.

That day can’t come soon enough.