Customer Reviews

A for Anything

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Recently, I was motivated to reach for my copy of Damon Knight's 1959 novel, A for Anything, after I edited a computer magazine article about a (real) device called the RepRap, a "3D printer" which UK scientists claim can replicate all sorts of other objects. Including, to some degree, itself. The scientists were full of optimistic ideas for how the technology could be put to use... but I remembered this book, and was far more cynical.

There's two sections to the novel. In the first -- regrettably only 33 pages long -- the inventor of the "gizmo" (a device that can indeed replicate anything) anonymously has sent 100 pairs of gizmos to people all around southern California. As people realize that the devices can really duplicate anything, even people, idealists hide and the power hungry gather forces. Because power lies in the hands of those who own and control gizmos, and slavery is the fate of everyone else.

It's a great premise, but unfortunately Damon Knight was more interested in the long term effects than he was in that initial power struggle. Most of the book is dedicated to the coming-of-age journey of Dick Jones, the son of a Gizmo "Man" who grew up on what feels eerily like a southern plantation. He's sent off to Colorado as a latter day foster child, presumably to learn the paths of power.

That could be a decent story too, except that it isn't. Not all 1950s SF was golden, even when it was written by such an otherwise-impressive author. Sometimes, as is the case with A for Anything (what a lousy title...), the author is more interested in peering behind the curtains in his world than in telling a compelling story. The characters aren't particularly sympathetic (Dick Jones is an annoying boob), the story pacing is confusing, and the ending never worked for me. Instead, Knight is trying to answer his own "What if" questions, such as "If someone objected to the political system, what could he do about it?"

Yet, yet... note that I hadn't read this book in at least 20 years, but I remembered it *immediately* and with detail when I encountered that scientific report. So the premise has merit. It just wasn't one of Knight's better books. So it's a 5 for the idea, a 2 for story (those first 33 pages are great); average of three.

This book explores the societal implications of free, pervasive, lossless duplication of matter. In short, author Knight proposes that human nature cannot handle such a technology in a responsible manner; instead the world plunges into anarchy, from which emerges a feudal society based around the slavery of expendible, replicated humans.

Today legislatures, corporations, and consumers alike are faced with the issue of free, pervasive, lossless duplication of intellectual property. The analogy is not perfect, but "A for Anything" provides a very useful viewpoint to help you make a decision about the issue. It's not half bad as a novel either.

This book explores the societal implications of free, pervasive, lossless duplication of matter. In short, author Knight proposes that human nature cannot handle such a technology in a responsible manner; instead the world plunges into anarchy, from which emerges a feudal society based around the slavery of expendible, replicated humans.

Today legislatures, corporations, and consumers alike are faced with the decision of how to deal with the issue of free, pervasive, lossless duplication of "intellectual property". The analogy is not perfect, but "A for Anything" provides a very useful viewpoint to help you make a decision about the issue.

As far as the novel goes, it has many of the unfortunate hallmarks of late 50s SF. The first chapter was apparently a short story in an SF magazine, later expanded into a novella, and here edited down again. It has little to do with the rest of the novel, and the omissions mean that the origin of the gismo device (the novel's Macguffin) are left obscure. The first chapter is also the highpoint of the novel. The true protagonist appears once the story leaps forward a few decades, and it's downhill all the way from there.

The characters are uniformly unlikeable, cardboard cut-outs, or both at once; they seem to drift in and out of the protagonist's narrative at random. Events and relationships that were supposedly of great importance to him are described briefly or even omitted entirely. Much time is spent describing the mountaintop city of Eagles, yet without it ever feeling real. Major philosophical issues around the duplication of humans are glossed over; two characters are forced to think about the issues, yet most of them aren't even stated and we never get any outcome from their supposed grappling with their self-identity. One glaring issue--what would happen to all the trash produced by a society that could duplicate as much of anything as it wanted?--is ignored entirely, and instead we are expected to believe that mankind has allowed nature to return to a semi-wild state over most of North America.

In addition, this is a poor Kindle conversion. As well as OCR typos, there are chunks of text repeated at random. This is the second Kindle book I've purchased from RosettaBooks, and both have had major quality issues.

I have been pursuing and reading 50's Sci-Fi since the 1970's and I have to say that without question, hands down, this is the worst "Golden Age" Sci-Fi novel I have ever read. Nearly incoherent plot, oafish, unlikeable main character (Dick Jones, of all the possible names you could muster -- heaven help us all), wooden dialogue, flimsy motivations, secondary characters created and discarded at will, paper tiger adversaries, an unlikely society, and just plain not interesting! It was chore to get to the end. And the ending is completely unsatisfying. A total abortion. Do not buy it.

Skipping over the 70 years immediately following the introduciton of the Gizmo was a bad idea, regardless of the book's other faults. Knight proposes that in a world where a single armed revolutionary could raise in army of clones in hours, an aristoracy will be able to keep populations of slaves that vastly outnumber them. Does this strike anyone else as stupid? Slavery can only exist when there is an extreme disparity in military, economic, or political power between the owners and the owned. Putting down a Gizmo-equipped rebellion would be all but impossible; so long as a single enemy with a rifle, bullet, and pair of Gizmos exists, the fight isn't over. Cornering a Gizmo-equipped economy, where anything can be produced in any quantity and the only things having any perceived 'value' are those which were hand-crafted, is absurd beyond the pale. And in such an environment, a government would be totally helpless to enforce unpopular laws, like ones making slaves.

Governments would disintigrate, true, he got that much right. But the end result will be that any Gizmo-equipped individual would be as materially wealthy as they wanted to be, entirely self-sufficient, and (this is the kicker) basically invincible. You can kill me, sure, but the backup I made this morning will just be pissed off at you. It'd be like the "armed society is a polite society" maxim taken to a twisted extreme, where everyone is powerful beyond all measure but simultaneously almost totally incapable of hurting one another.

A FOR ANYTHING

GET A GIZMO
AND
GET THE WORLD



The discovery of the Gizmo was seen by its inventor as the final solution to all of Man's ills: a device that would duplicate... anything. What it did produce was the total breakdown of the democratic structure. Within two generations, American society degenerated into two groups: Masters who controlled the Gizmo's power, and slaves.

Dick Jones is the youthful heir to Buckhill, one of the oldest compounds to rise from the ashes of society's ruins. His rite of passage sends him to Eagles, the secret mountain fortress that is the last bastion of power on the continent. It is here that Jones will complete his training, but he soon discovers that the line between Master and slave is a fine one.

If he cannot distinguish between honor and his heart, he will be doomed to a horrible death.

The basic idea is neat, the execution lacks. The Gizmo World is highly implausible, the story is weak, the characters are bland.

A better desription of a world without material needs is the Culture.