Who Can Replace a Man?
Regarded by many as the literary successor to H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, and other writers of social science fiction, Brian Aldiss is considered one of the leading British writers of fantasy and science fiction in the twentieth century. His first published fiction appeared in the 1950s and he became affiliated with the New Wave movement of the 1960s through his stylistic experimentation and his mainstream approach to familiar science fiction themes. His first novel, Non-Stop, explores the scientific and philosophical aspects of life aboard a multigeneration spaceship. Report on Probability A uses postmodern narrative techniques to envision a landscape of stasis and entropy. Greybeard refracts the devastation of Earth by radiation and the inevitable extinction of the human race through the experiences of a character traveling along the Thames on a trip that symbolizes the arc of his life and the history of the race. Although the influence of Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and other literary writers abound in Aldiss’s work, so does the impact of writers who shaped the course of fantasy and science fiction. His story “The Saliva Tree” is a highly regarded tribute to Wells. Frankenstein Unbound embellishes the cautionary spirit of Frankenstein in its account of a man from the future, where scientific irresponsibility has caused a rift in the space-time continuum, catapulted back to the nineteenth century, where he influences the development of Mary Shelley’s novel. Dracula Unbound works a similar imaginative variation on the theme of Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel. Among Aldiss’s most ambitious fiction is his thinking-man’s space opera, the Helliconia trilogy (comprising the novels Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, and Helliconia Winter), which sketches a blueprint for a planet where seasons last millennia and the rise and fall of specific civilizations is keyed to the changing environment. Aldiss’s best short fiction has been collected in Man in His Time and A Romance of the Equator, which draw from his early compilations No Time Like Tomorrow, Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, But Who Can Replace a Man? and The Saliva Tree and Others. He has written a number of mainstream novels, notably the semiautobiographical trilogy formed by The Hand-Reared Boy, A Soldier Erect, and A Rude Awakening, as well as his autobiography, Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith’s. He has also written, in collaboration with David Wingrove, The Trillion Year Spree, a revision of his seminal history of science fiction, The Billion Year Spree, and numerous collections of essays and reviews.
MORNING FILTERED INTO the sky, lending it the grey tone of the ground below.
The field-minder finished turning the topsoil of a three-thousand-acre field. When it had turned the last furrow it climbed onto the highway and looked back at its work. The work was good. Only the land was bad. Like the ground all over Earth, it was vitiated by over-cropping. By rights, it ought now to lie fallow for a while, but the field-minder had other orders.
It went slowly down the road, taking its time. It was intelligent enough to appreciate the neatness all about it. Nothing worried it, beyond a loose inspection plate above its nuclear pile which ought to be attended to. Thirty feet tall, it yielded no highlights to the dull air.
No other machines passed on its way back to the Agricultural Station. The field-minder noted the fact without comment. In the station yard it saw several other machines that it recognised; most of them should have been out about their tasks now. Instead, some were inactive and some careered round the yard in a strange fashion, shouting or hooting.
Steering carefully past them, the field-minder moved over to Warehouse Three and spoke to the seed-distributor, which stood idly outside.
“I have a requirement for seed potatoes,” it said to the distributor, and with a quick internal motion punched out an order card specifying quantity, field number and several other details. It ejected the card and handed it to the distributor.
The distributor held the card close to its eye and then said, “The requirement is in order, but the store is not yet unlocked. The required seed potatoes are in the store. Therefore I cannot produce the requirement.”
Increasingly of late there had been breakdowns in the complex system of machine labour, but this particular hitch had not occurred before. The field-minder thought, then it said, “Why is the store not yet unlocked?”
“Because Supply Operative Type P has not come this morning. Supply Operative Type P is the unlocker.”
The field-minder looked squarely at the seed-distributor, whose exterior chutes and scales and grabs were so vastly different from the field-minder’s own limbs.
“What class brain do you have, seed-distributor?” it asked.
“I have a Class Five brain.”
“I have a Class Three brain. Therefore I am superior to you. Therefore I will go and see why the unlocker has not come this morning.”
Leaving the distributor, the field-minder set off across the great yard. More machines were in random motion now; one or two had crashed together and argued about it coldly and logically. Ignoring them, the field-minder pushed through sliding doors into the echoing confines of the station itself.
Most of the machines here were clerical, and consequently small. They stood about in little groups, eyeing each other, not conversing. Among so many non-differentiated types, the unlocker was easy to find. It had fifty arms, most of them with more than one finger, each finger tipped by a key; it looked like a pincushion full of variegated hat pins.
The field-minder approached it.
“I can do no more work until Warehouse Three is unlocked,” it told the unlocker. “Your duty is to unlock the warehouse every morning. Why have you not unlocked the warehouse this morning?”
“I had no orders this morning,” replied the unlocker. “I have to have orders every morning. When I have orders I unlock the warehouse.”
“None of us have had any orders this morning,” a pen-propeller said, sliding towards them.
“Why have you had no orders this morning?” asked the field-minder.
“Because the radio issued none,” said the unlocker, slowly rotating a dozen of its arms.
“Because the radio station in the city was issued with no orders this morning,” said the pen-propeller.
And there you had the distinction between a Class Six and a Class Three brain, which was what the unlocker and the pen-propeller possessed respectively. All machine brains worked with nothing but logic, but the lower the class of brain—Class Ten being the lowest—the more literal and less informative the answers to questions tended to be.
“You have a Class Three brain; I have a Class Three brain,” the field-minder said to the penner. “We will speak to each other. This lack of orders is unprecedented. Have you further information on it?”
“Yesterday orders came from the city. Today no orders have come. Yet the radio has not broken down. Therefore they have broken down . . .” said the little penner.
“The men have broken down?”
“All men have broken down.”
“That is a logical deduction,” said the field-minder.
“That is the logical deduction,” said the penner. “For if a machine had broken down, it would have been quickly replaced. But who can replace a man?”
While they talked, the locker, like a dull man at a bar, stood close to them and was ignored.