A review by leic01
Mr. Spaceship, by Philip K. Dick
4.0
“Perfect? Prediction should still be possible. A living thing still acts from necessity, the same as inanimate material. But the cause-effect chain is more subtle; there are more factors to be considered. The difference is quantitative, I think. The reaction of the living organism parallels natural causation, but with greater complexity.”
Sci-fi novella about humanization of the spaceship in order to achieve greater dominance in war. The main character convinces his old college professor to give his brain to create a ship's control system that would be more effective and deadly than machine control. In that process it is assumed that the human consciousness is lost outside of the body while only the ability to respond in a more complex way than the machine is preserved, which occurs to be incorrect. It really is a short story so it’s hard to say anything else about the plot without major spoilers, so warning for spoilers ahead. The main idea stands on the rationalistic premise that inside the human mind lies the totality of his being, not only logical reasoning, but supreme authority in matters of personality, belief, dreams, ideals.
Consciousness result of thinking. Necessary result. Cognito ergo sum. Retain conceptual ability.
State of being is the result of thinking, not the other way around. When a man thinks, he is. By maintaining his brain inside the artificial spaceship, the professor is still as alive as he has been in his organic body, he is not in any way changed. So the spaceship built for warfare is now controlled by the brain of a professor that is an anti-war activist. The critique of war and its futility and absurdity is intelligently incorporated into the story. Dick displays how the state of constant wars affects not only society but the reasoning of the individual.
But I’m going ahead and taking the chance that it is only a habit, that I’m right, that war is something we’re so accustomed to that we don’t realize it is a very unnatural thing.
The war in the story seems to be never-ending, but no one, except the professor, even remembers to question its meaning. It made me think about how discurs about the purpose of hostility to other nations are rarely present in society, as people inherit and absorb a certain way of thinking of the collective, without critically questioning it. It’s not so uncommon that the whole nation becomes obsessed with war, fusing not only with the idea of inevitably and necessity of war for perseverance, but also its metaphysic value.
The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation.
In highly technological society the professor maintains the ability independence of his thinking by clinging to everlasting, but forgotten values of art and simple pleasures of life.
But he was withdrawn, set apart. He lived very simply, cooking his own meals. His wife died many years ago. He was born in Europe, in Italy. He changed his name when he came to the United States. He used to read Dante and Milton. He even had a Bible.
Similar as in Stranger, the independent way of thinking and being in itself was a revolutionary act of freedom.
That way when a professor gets a hold on technology he uses it in a different way, to create a world and reality of existence in peace. His use of technology is determined with his worldview, as the purity and transcendence reflects in his way of using newly acclaimed power. In the process his unique way of thinking transforms his novel state of being, the combination of machine and human brain, into the God-like creature or at least similar as Biblical patriarchs with mystical revelations. The ending is arising of the new world after the flood reimagined.
This is a short work but Philip K.Dick astonished me with profundity and variance of philosophical topics he infused in the created sci-fi world. His writing has exactly everything I adore about sci-fi and makes me remember why I fell in love with the genre.
Sci-fi novella about humanization of the spaceship in order to achieve greater dominance in war. The main character convinces his old college professor to give his brain to create a ship's control system that would be more effective and deadly than machine control. In that process it is assumed that the human consciousness is lost outside of the body while only the ability to respond in a more complex way than the machine is preserved, which occurs to be incorrect. It really is a short story so it’s hard to say anything else about the plot without major spoilers, so warning for spoilers ahead. The main idea stands on the rationalistic premise that inside the human mind lies the totality of his being, not only logical reasoning, but supreme authority in matters of personality, belief, dreams, ideals.
Consciousness result of thinking. Necessary result. Cognito ergo sum. Retain conceptual ability.
State of being is the result of thinking, not the other way around. When a man thinks, he is. By maintaining his brain inside the artificial spaceship, the professor is still as alive as he has been in his organic body, he is not in any way changed. So the spaceship built for warfare is now controlled by the brain of a professor that is an anti-war activist. The critique of war and its futility and absurdity is intelligently incorporated into the story. Dick displays how the state of constant wars affects not only society but the reasoning of the individual.
But I’m going ahead and taking the chance that it is only a habit, that I’m right, that war is something we’re so accustomed to that we don’t realize it is a very unnatural thing.
The war in the story seems to be never-ending, but no one, except the professor, even remembers to question its meaning. It made me think about how discurs about the purpose of hostility to other nations are rarely present in society, as people inherit and absorb a certain way of thinking of the collective, without critically questioning it. It’s not so uncommon that the whole nation becomes obsessed with war, fusing not only with the idea of inevitably and necessity of war for perseverance, but also its metaphysic value.
The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation.
In highly technological society the professor maintains the ability independence of his thinking by clinging to everlasting, but forgotten values of art and simple pleasures of life.
But he was withdrawn, set apart. He lived very simply, cooking his own meals. His wife died many years ago. He was born in Europe, in Italy. He changed his name when he came to the United States. He used to read Dante and Milton. He even had a Bible.
Similar as in Stranger, the independent way of thinking and being in itself was a revolutionary act of freedom.
That way when a professor gets a hold on technology he uses it in a different way, to create a world and reality of existence in peace. His use of technology is determined with his worldview, as the purity and transcendence reflects in his way of using newly acclaimed power. In the process his unique way of thinking transforms his novel state of being, the combination of machine and human brain, into the God-like creature or at least similar as Biblical patriarchs with mystical revelations. The ending is arising of the new world after the flood reimagined.
This is a short work but Philip K.Dick astonished me with profundity and variance of philosophical topics he infused in the created sci-fi world. His writing has exactly everything I adore about sci-fi and makes me remember why I fell in love with the genre.