The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence

by Alexei Panshin

  This special situation that we find ourselves in is a unique thought-experiment that tests the relative understanding, power and reality-structures of robot and man. We don’t quibble about how we happened to arrive here. We accept it so that we may have the pleasure of seeing this game of comparisons played through to its conclusion.

  But why is it such a pleasure? The fact is that we experience this story in a curious double fashion. Subjectively, we may be trapped in a pocket universe, a closed situation, with absolutely no way to prove which ordering of reality is actually so. Objectively, however, we stand outside the confines of the story and look upon it with our own knowledge of human science and society, and our previous experience of SF stories in which robots were designed and space stations constructed.

  We assume we know which side is really right—despite Cutie’s preternatural self-confidence and Powell’s strange aura of doubt. And it is this special knowledge that allows us to find amusement in the sight of a Powell burying his face in his trembling hands, or a Donovan beating the air impotently with his fists in a fit of frustration.

  We can afford to chuckle when Cutie comes to recognize the solar station’s energy converter as “the Master,”404 and the lesser robots of the station all acknowledge Cutie as “the Prophet.”405 Cutie and his cohorts are no old-time cosmic threat like A. Merritt’s Metal People, and we know it. We can have confidence that they aren’t going to go raging off and attempt to take over the universe in the name of the Master.

  What Cutie does do is bar the two men from the station’s control room and engine room as deluded lesser beings whose function has been superseded. But Powell and Donovan know that an electron storm is on its way which will certainly disturb the energy beam to Earth. Unless precise control is maintained, the beam will go out of focus and hundreds of square miles of planet will be incinerated.

  If they don’t regain control of the situation, a major boo-boo is likely to occur for which Powell and Donovan will be held responsible. But nothing they can say or do—including assembling another robot while Cutie looks on—will serve to shake the robot’s firm faith in his religion of perfect robotic rationality:

  Donovan was half in tears. “He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.”

  “No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a reasoning robot, damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that. . . . You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the right postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”406

  However, when the electron storm has come and gone, Powell and Donovan discover that the energy beam to Earth has been kept in perfect focus all the while. Even though Cutie may not be willing to acknowledge the existence of Earth, but prefers to believe that he has simply been keeping “ ‘all dials in equilibrium in accordance with the will of the Master’ ”407—nonetheless, the robot has performed the job he was designed to do.

  Donovan continues to be upset that Cutie should be so persistent in his delusions, but Powell now knows better. He says, “ ‘Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments and graphs. That’s all we ever followed.’ ”408

  Powell has come to a recognition that as long as Cutie handles the job he was made for, and does it perfectly, it doesn’t really matter what the robot believes. Since human purposes ultimately rule, the apparent threat of robotic rebellion is not actually a threat at all.

  Powell is still capable of being stung by Cutie’s contempt and pity. But so fundamentally reconciled to the facts of the situation has he grown that his last words to Donovan are a suggestion that later QT models be brought here to learn Cutie’s belief system before they take up their posts—as though he believes that this would benefit their effectiveness of operation. And when he and Donovan are finally relieved from duty aboard the space station by two other humans, Powell is able to grin up his sleeve at the thought of these guys trying to cope with Cutie, but he doesn’t think it necessary to warn them about what they will be facing.

  Donovan, however, leaves the station still cursing under his breath at Cutie and turning his back to avoid having to deal with him. His sense of ordinary human reality has been sufficiently shaken that his final words to Powell are, “ ‘I won’t feel right until I actually see Earth and feel the ground under my feet—just to make sure it’s really there.’ ”409

  And it does remain a fact that the question of relative truth has not really been settled. Cutie may well do things that humans think desirable in something of the same way that a human might have done them—but his personal belief system certainly hasn’t been refuted. Believing his own beliefs, he has been able to run the solar station as effectively or more effectively than the humans did believing theirs. Within the robot’s sphere of autonomy, it seems certain that things will continue to be done according to his frame of reference. And any humans who enter Cutie’s domain are going to have to learn to recognize this and come to terms with it.

  “Reason” is a story that at first appears to be about the dangers posed by a wrong-thinking robot. If that were really the problem, however, then the solution would be to straighten out the kinks in robotic thinking, perhaps by the expedient of showing QT robots some of the sights of Earth before they are taken off to serve aboard space stations. It surely wouldn’t be to bring still more robots here to learn delusions firsthand from Cutie.

  A better interpretation of “Reason” is that it is about the need for overdirective men to learn to relax and allow the robot to get on with the job he has been designed to do—according to his own terms.

  Taken in this light, “Reason” may be seen as a message meant for John Campbell. As plainly as Asimov could bring himself to say it, this story said: Different people live according to different structurings of reality, all founded on different premises, and all equally unprovable. But it is perfectly possible to call a goal by different names and still have it be the same goal. If you will just stand back and let me get on with it, I will do things your way. But I reserve the right to think them my way.

  Was Campbell equal to a challenge of this kind? Indeed he was. Asimov submitted “Reason” to the editor on November 18, 1940. And just four days later, he received a check in the mail from Street & Smith. Not only did Campbell ask for no revisions, but he even went so far as to tell Asimov that he had seriously considered awarding him a bonus for this story.

  Asimov’s display of rebellion and original thought was everything that Campbell could have been hoping to see from the youngster through those two long years of patient personal instruction. The Asimov revealed by “Reason” was the kind of writer Campbell treasured most—the man who could do things Campbell’s way, but who was also determined to think things out for himself.

  It was as though the writing of “Reason” by Asimov and its acceptance by Campbell together constituted the forging of a working contract. Effectively, the writer would strive to give Campbell exactly what he wanted—except for any case where he happened to have his own convictions about things. And the editor would love and cherish Asimov both for his originality and for his spunk as a rebel within the law.

  Two things helped to make this arrangement between Asimov and Campbell work. One was that—with the rare exception of “Nightfall”—the ideas that the two men were playing around with and building upon were Asimov’s to begin with, not Campbell’s. And the other was that when Asimov did take a suggestion of Campbell’s and twist it into something that he found inoffensive, it was almost always done in such a skillful way that Campbell found the change inoffensive as well.

  The last important thing we should note about the accommodation the two men reached is that it was tacit, no more than an unspoken working agreement. It was nothing that Asimov could ever feel completely certain about.

  It wasn’t that Campbell was incapable of reaching explicit understandings with his most valued authors. In the course of 1941, Robert Heinlein would, tactfully but effect
ively, force the acceptance of everything he might submit to Campbell by telling the editor, “I’ll send you a story from time to time . . . until the day comes when you bounce one. At that point we’re through. Now that I know you personally, having a story rejected by you would be too traumatic.”410

  And during 1941, Campbell would decide to write to A.E. van Vogt in Canada and throw Astounding wide open to him. So much work was Campbell willing to contract to buy from him that van Vogt turned himself into a one-man factory all through World War II, toiling “from the time I got up until eleven o’clock at night, every day, seven days a week, for years,”411 just to keep Campbell supplied with stories.

  As time passed, Asimov would eventually come to be ranked alongside Heinlein and van Vogt as a major writer of SF—even in Campbell’s eyes. What is more, so in tune would he and Campbell become that there would not be a word of fiction that Isaac Asimov would write from the beginning of 1943 to the end of the decade—with the exception of one novel written at the request of another editor—that John Campbell would not buy and print.

  But Asimov would never be offered carte blanche by Campbell, and he himself would never feel entitled to deliver ultimatums or demand guarantees. Even though Asimov might eventually become capable of addressing the editor with an occasional uncomfortable “John,” in his heart he would always regard his mentor as “Mr. Campbell”412 and treat him accordingly.

  Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that despite Asimov’s secret impulses to rebel and Campbell’s lack of guarantees, a new working relationship had been established between the two men after “Reason.” This may be seen in the fact that when Asimov came to visit Campbell at his office one month after turning in “Reason,” both men had been giving thought to the implications of the story.

  Campbell had been thinking about one particular passage in “Reason” that he found troubling. At the direst moment in the story, Donovan suggests that it might be possible to neutralize Cutie by squirting concentrated nitric acid in his joints. But Powell answers, “ ‘Don’t be a dope, Mike. Do you suppose he’s going to let us get near him with acid in our hands—or that the other robots wouldn’t take us apart if we did manage to get away with it?’ ”413

  John Campbell was a person who enjoyed nothing more than to confront a listener with some outrageous idea and dare him to refute it, so he could really appreciate Cutie’s discomfiting arguments—just as long as he felt certain that Cutie would perform his duties and injure no one. But to Campbell, the kind of robots who might disassemble human beings as an act of retribution presented a problem that cried out for solution. And he discerned the answer lurking in Asimov’s previous robot story, “Robbie”: “ ‘He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine—made so.’ ”

  Asimov, for his part, came to this story conference with the idea for another robotic problem story. What if, through some accident of manufacture, a robot should prove to be telepathic, able to read human minds? He says, “Again, Campbell became interested and we talked it over at length—what complications would arise out of robotic telepathy, what a robot would be forced to lie about, how the matter could be resolved, and so on.”414

  In the course of this discussion, Campbell found occasion to raise the issue that had been bothering him, and the grounds for its solution. Characteristically, however, the editor didn’t state his true concerns in any direct and open way, but rather elected to phrase them as another Campbellian dictum. He said:

  “Look, Asimov, in working this out, you have to realize that there are three rules that robots have to follow. In the first place, they can’t do any harm to human beings; in the second place, they have to obey orders without doing harm; in the third, they have to protect themselves, without doing harm or proving disobedient.”415

  Asimov would take up these operating principles proposed by Campbell and give them formal expression in his stories as the Three Laws of Robotics, phrasing them this way:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws

  The Three Laws of Robotics would become the basis for seven stories that Asimov would write for Campbell during the Forties. In 1950, these stories—together with “Robbie” and “Reason,” rewritten to bring them into conformity with the Three Laws—would be collected under the title I, Robot. And Asimov would go on to write many more stories and novels incorporating these fundamental principles of robotic operation.

  In later years, Asimov would more than once attempt to credit Campbell with responsibility for inventing the Three Laws. But Campbell would deny it, saying, “ ‘No, Asimov, I picked them out of your stories and your discussions. You didn’t state them explicitly, but they were there.’ ”416

  And that would be the truth—as far as it went. What it would overlook was the role played by Campbell’s own urgent desire that human control be established over the robot.

  It was not because Asimov’s robots were dangerous that this control was necessary, but because they were all touched by transcendence: RB-34, in Asimov’s third robot story “Liar!” is telepathic. QT-1 is a robotic prophet. Even the least-common-denominator robot, Robbie, is superhumanly faithful and loving and kind.

  When Cutie claims that no being can create another being superior to itself, it seems that he must be mistaken. For apparently that is what human beings—in collaboration with the glitch factor—have done. Humanity designs the physical and mental form of the robot. The uncertainty of the universe does the rest.

  We can see the glitch factor at work in “Liar!” where it is invoked at the beginning of the story to account for robot RB-34’s otherwise unaccountable ability to read minds. One human says to another: “ ‘Listen, Bogert. There wasn’t a hitch in the assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that.’ ”417

  But Bogert, who is a mathematician, replies:

  “If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-four operations necessary for the manufacture of a single positronic brain, each separate operation depending for successful completion upon any number of factors, from five to a hundred and five. If any one of them goes seriously wrong, the ‘brain’ is ruined.”418

  Only not precisely ruined this time: made transcendent. This sort of accident has a way of happening to Asimov’s robots. They seem to have some latent tendency toward transcendence inherited from their wild Techno Age ancestors.

  It is only their bondage to the Three Laws of Robotics that makes these powerful robots tolerable to humanity. However they may choose to behave on their own time, we can have confidence that these strange servitors we have created will not injure us and that they must do whatever we tell them to do.

  In fact, “Liar!” is specifically concerned with a conflict between the transcendent power of a robot and the Laws of Robotics, which is resolved in favor of Campbell’s and Asimov’s in-built rules.

  In “Liar!,” RB-34 has the special ability to read human minds. But Herbie, as he is familiarly called, has the bad habit of lying to people about the thoughts he reads.

  Herbie is bound by the Laws of Robotics not to do harm. But he believes that if he speaks the truth about what he knows, he will destroy people’s illusions and cause them pain. To avoid this harm, he tells them whatever it is they most want to hear instead of the truth.

  But this can lead to eventual greater pain, embarrassment, and chagrin. For instance, Herbie tells the spinster robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin that a man she has a crush on secretly loves her. But then, when she begins to reveal her own repressed emotions, she learns that the man is actually recently married and has no interest in her.


  Herbie is able to identify the glitch in his manufacture that is responsible for robotic telepathic power. But a vindictive Dr. Calvin prevents him from revealing what he knows. She points out to him over and over again that if he tells the answer to human scientists, he will be showing them up, but if he doesn’t, he will be depriving them of what they want to know. Whatever Herbie does, then, he must cause harm to a human, and thus break the Laws of Robotics.

  Dr. Calvin’s paradox is such an insoluble problem that poor Herbie is driven into a catatonic silence. There is certainly some degree of loss here—future robots will just have to do without the power of telepathy. But that must be reckoned a small cost, at least insofar as John Campbell and the modern science fiction public works project are concerned, beside Susan Calvin’s potent demonstration of the power to control inherent in the Laws of Robotics.

  Asimov delivered “Liar!” to Campbell on January 20, 1941. And, for a second time, Campbell would ask for no revisions and get a check to Asimov within four days.

  When the story was received, “Reason” was already in production, scheduled for the April 1941 issue of Astounding. To give Asimov’s stories of controlled robots maximum splash, Campbell rushed “Liar!” into the very next issue—where it would appear directly after “Universe,” Robert Heinlein’s lead novelet.