The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction by Patricia S. WarrickReview by: Carolyn H. RhodesComputers and the Humanities, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 274-275Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30207357 .

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274 Book Reviews

elementos en el conglomerado (inicial, media, final) y su caricter no independiente.

Notas

[1] Waltmann, Franklin McClure, Concordance to Poema de Mio Cid. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972, XIII + 465 pp. Es una concordancia exhaustiva de la edici6n paleogrifica de Menindez Pidal, no lematizada, sin separaci6n de los

hom6grafos, sigue fielmente las unidades grificas fijadas por el copista, sin elaboraci6n alguna.

[2] Waltman, Franklin McClure, Unity of Authorship in The Poema de mio Cid, Ph.D. Thesis. The Pennsylvania State University, 1971.

[3] La concordancia lematizada de G.F. Jones esta basada en

la edici6n crftica de Menindez Pidal.

14] Observaciones sobre el m6todo empleado y los primeros andilisis del material elaborado se encuentran en los

siguientes trabajos de Ren6 Pellen: - Le po~me du Cid 6tudid A l'ordinateur. Le systime pr&- positionnel Revue de Linguistique Romane 40 (1976) 8- 34. - Le Podme du Cid etudid A l'ordinateur. Vocabulaire des Noms Propres. Examen de ce fichier, Cahiers de linguisti- que hispanique midi6vale (Universiti Paris XIII) 1 (1976) 7-99. - Poema de Mio Cid. Vocabulaire riduit (vocables avec leur frequence globale et leur frequence par chant). Caractbres statistiques g6ndraux de ce vocabulaire. Con- tribution de l'informatique a la connaissance du lexique espagnol, mididval, Cahiers de linguistique hispanique

midi6vale (Universit6, Paris XIII), 2 (1977) 177-253; 3

(1978) 155-268. - Codage des textes espagnols medievaux en vue de leur

analyse informatique. Une experience (Le Poeme de Cid); quelques propositions, Revue des langues romanes 83(1) (1978) 15-40. - Poema de Mio Cid. Etude du possessif. Contribution de l'analyse informatique a l'histoire de la langue castillane, Hommage a C. Camproux (Montpellier, 1978) tome 2, pp. 1149-1171.

[5] Para mayor claridad indico el lema con mayusculas y las formas con cursivas.

[6] PeUen, Codage .. . p. 19. (vid. Nota [4]). [7] S6lo habria que mencionar a este respecto que algunos

caracteres sextos y s6ptimos en la cuarta columna del "Index Alphabetique" desaparecen en las p~iginas 276 y 277 y que se encuentran signos no aclarados previamente como $ (vid. fizierades).

The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction, Patri- cia S. Warrick. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1980. ISBN 0-262-23100-X.

By Carolyn H. Rhodes Patricia Warrick's survey and analysis of machine

intelligence in science fiction is a useful and thought- provoking study of the range and implications of

literary depictions of robots and computers. As a

history, it is most intensive for the time from 1930 to 1977, the span of the publication dates of the featured works, some 225 novels and short stories. Warrick also traces mythic antecedents and forerun-

ning fictions, and since, as she observes, no such history of the topic has been done before, she

provides brief reviews of both scientific and aesthetic

concepts. These serve as background to the trends in

technology of artificial intelligence and to her assess- ment of science fiction as a genre.

The authors treated add up to a very wide sampl- ing of the noteworthy SF writers, self-selected (in effect) by their dramatization of mechanisms that think. And the range of subjects is just as fascinating: from alien intelligence and Bertalanffy's holistics, through Koestler's hierarchies of consciousness and the SF aesthetics of Joanna Russ, to Weizenbaum's

progressions and Weiner's warnings. The biblio-

graphies (fiction and non-fiction) and the comprehen- sive index make the work useful as a reference tool.

While successfully tracing recurrent patterns and themes and evaluating their aesthetic quality, Warrick also "explores the cross-fertilization taking place between writers ... the fiction and the developments in theoretical science and technological innovation"

(p. xiii). All too often she finds lapses of conception when she expects writers to keep pace with current

technology and predictable future applications. Her

major conclusions will distress any humanists who like to think that SF typically projects the future with clarity, balance, and perhaps even hope, espe- cially for constructive effects of technology. After

demonstrating the rarity of positive implications about computers and robots, and the greater rarity of intricate knowledge about them, she raises the

question of whether it is possible for 'the literary imag-

Carolyn Rhodes, Professor of English at Old Dominion Uni- versity, Norfolk, VA, recently edited First Person Female American, an annotated bibliography of autobiographies (Whitston, 1980), and has published articles on SF treat- ment of computers in government, dystopian uses of IQ test- ing, and Zamiatin's We.

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Book Reviews 275

ination' to keep us with the complexities of com-

puter science and the pace of developments in the field (p. 234).

Although Warrick argues persuasively for two

approaches which she features in The Cybernetic Ima- gination in Science Fiction, both will cause difficul- ties for some readers. One approach was the cate-

gorizing of the fiction as representing open, closed, or isolated systems. Many will wonder why new terms were needed, since the categories seem to resemble

utopian, dystopian, and indifferent or partial projec- tions of the future or alternate worlds. Yet the terms do enable the author to introduce readers to fresh 'handles' for imagined worlds, even if they arouse the

suspicion that some circular reasoning may be involved when the open-system worlds are the only ones in which "the computer enriches man's social existence and, instead of imprisoning him, permits him to escape from the earth into space" (p. 101).

Another basis for probable debate is Warrick's set of aesthetic standards. Scholars of SF agree that the criteria of traditional literary criticism fail to give sufficient weight to the concerns of SF writers. This

judgment she shares, as when she calls for grounding in scientific knowledge and skilled use of dislocations in time or space. Other standards, however, become

unduly subjective: SF should bring "new awareness"

(p. 84), creative encompassment of indeterminancy (p. 85), and "a moment of illumination" when the reader "experiences a shining forth of a connection where none had previously existed for him" (p. 87).

Perhaps the author's yearning for bright prospects both for literature and for information technology has shaped her final judgments. She believes that science fiction which "is antiscientific in its attitude or ignores science as it models the future" will almost

always be shallow - "nothing more than entertain- ment and escapism" (p. 237). Implicitly, fictional cheer about progress through applied science seems connected with attaining moments of illumination. The book ends with the hope that "the literary ima-

gination that immerses itself in science before and

during its imaginative leap may provide genuinely creative insights that will lead us, intelligently and

humanely, into our future" (p. 237). The book is enhanced by the author's eagerness to

distill and explain subjects as difficult to summarize as systems models, structuralism in literature, information theories, and electronic practicalities.

Thus it is invaluable both for its focus on the history of intelligent machines in SF and for tracing the many-stranded connections of fiction to theoretical and applied science, as well as to humanistic implica- tions, particularly in their psychological, social, and ethical aspects.

The Many Faces of Information Science, ed. Edward C. Weiss. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977. AAAS Selected Symposium 3. 128 pp.

By Pauline Cochrane

The stated purpose of this volume is "to review the current status of information science and to

explore possibilities for breakthroughs." The stated

purpose for the AAAS Selected Symposia Series, of which this volume is a part, is "to provide a means for more permanently recording and more widely dissem-

inating some of the valuable material which is dis- cussed at the AAAS Annual National Meetings." In the opinion of this reviewer the series' objective was

partially met, but the volume's purpose was not. What we have here are the five papers of William

Goffman, Marshall C. Yovits and others, Naomi

Sager, Donald J. Hillman, and Vladimir Slamecka and Charles Pearson. We do not have any of the ensuing discussions of breakthroughs or comingling of research projects. From the cited references in these five papers, it would appear that self-citation predom- inates and the work of other authors in this volume is not too well known to the others. Hence the apt choice for the title of the volume, for which the editor is to be commended.

Since Mr. Weiss, as one of the program officers in the Information Science Program at the National Science Foundation, knows each author as a principal investigator of funded research programs, this volume concentrates on the kind of research funded by NSF/ ISP. For historians of information science, it is an

important volume, but not for students in the field.

Although the editor tries to discuss the 'spectrum' of information science in his five-page introduction, he

has to admit that the bulk of the volume is focused on the basic end of the spectrum and that neither the theoretical foundation nor a 'common nature' for the field exists. The play on words is not helpful either - from information science in the introduc-

Pauline Cochrane is a professor in the School of Information Studies of Syracuse University.

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