Famous and Infamous Computers in Science Fiction

Ghostwheel

Alright, probably not the best known computing device in the annals of science fiction but certainly one of the more interesting ones. Ghostwheel is the invention of Roger Zelazny from his second set of Amber books following the story of Merlin of Amber. It was Merlin who developed the machine with a high degree of sentience to act as a master manipulator of the Shadow Worlds. Unfortunately he had not counted on the near hostility with which everyone else would view Ghostwheel and he was ordered to shut the device down. Alas Ghostwheel was sentient and not minded to co-operate in his destruction. I feel that Zelazny was not really comfortable with what he had wrought with Ghostwheel and failed to use it to its best.

Multivac

Multivac is really a class of computer from the pen of Isaac Asimov and while not strictly speaking part of his positronic robots sequences, some of his short stories deal with Multivac on it’s own terms - ‘The Evitable Conflict’ deals with what appears to be a programming conflict and discusses just how much control humanity has over its future and ‘The Last Question’ develops the idea of Multivac’s omnipotence to its logical conclusion…. The Multivac computers are amongst the best examples of Big Iron computing in science fiction - an example of Asimov’s beliefs that both robots and computers are pieces of technology to be used rather than fashion accessories as many cyberpunk authors see them.

HAL 9000

Quite probably the most famous fictional computer HAL comes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Generally depicted as the archetypical Mad Computer, HAL was basically driven ’mad’ by programming conflicts between its core programming to keep the crew of the Discovery safe during their journey out to Saturn and the almost as strong injunction not to reveal anything about that mission. HALL is saved from being the ultimate Bad Guy (in my opinion anyway) by the final scene in which David Bowman pulls his memory chips reducing him to imbecility.

Deep Thought and Earth

Deep Thought is the computer from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series from Douglas Adams. Designed to calculate the answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything, it spent seven thousand years cogitating over the answer finally coming up with the answer 42. Earth was designed to calculate the actual question Deep Thought’s creators should have asked. Things did not go as planned…

Logics

The logics were from the short story A Logic Called Joe by Murray Leinster and despite being written back in the late forties(?) holds the record as being the closest description of today’s interconnected world. A logic was a local device from which you could request any piece of information from any other similarly connected device from films and radio plays to plans on how to rob a bank, or worse.

Mycroft (Mike)

Mycroft is an artificial intelligence that ‘awoke’ in the central computer complex of the lunar penal authority. Mike was a key character in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the basic idea behind its existence is that intelligence is a function of complexity - the more connections a brain has the more intelligent it will be until it ‘wakes’ up.

The Far Star's Computer

The computer that ran the starship Far Star in the books 'Foundation's Edge' and 'Foundation and Earth' from the pen of Isaac Asimov. This computer is treated as a black box by Asimov and the things that really makes it worth a mention is the fact that it is controlled mentally and this control is achieved by the laying on of hands. It seems that the computer on the Far Star was specifically adapted for the use of Golan Trevise, the exiled Councilman who was the ship's pilot.

Supreme

Supreme is the rather granduiliently named computer that is at the heart of the artificial world Primordes in the Jan Darzek novels from Lloyd Biggle Jnr. Supreme is the device that makes the Galactic Synthesis possible and is certainly not the only world sized computer in fiction. It takes in information from all the worlds signed up to the Synthesis and beyond and then makes comments that sometimes come to have the force of law. Supreme is served by eight councillors whose identities are secret from the general being-in-the-street and, nominally, from each other. Supreme does not generally play a major part in any of Biggle's stories but I just enjoy the basic concept behind Supreme.

 

If you have a favourite computer of your own please e-mail me the details