Customer Reviews

THE HUMANOIDS

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book contains two classic SF works. The first is the novelette titled 'With Folded Hands...' published first in 1947 in 'Astounding Science Fiction'. The second story is the novel "The Humanoids", which was also published originally in 'Astounding Science Fiction' in 1948 (March - May) under the title '...And Searching Mind'. The two stories share the same nemesis, which are the robots known as The Humanoids.

The Humanoids' purpose is "To Serve and Obey, And Guard Men from Harm", which is really just a rewording of the first two laws of robotics that Asimov and Campbell create for Asimov's robot stories that first started to appear in 1940. However, this does not make these stories redundant, as Williamson's Humanoids take their purpose to the extreme, and go so far as to prevent men from doing anything that could potentially cause harm, which includes such activities as driving, or even reading in some cases.

In 'With Folded Hands...,' the hero is Mr. Underhill, who opposes the humanoids at first because they threaten his livelihood (he is an android salesman), but later because he can see the effect they have on people's lives. He works with the creator of the Humanoids, Mr. Sledge, who is desperately trying to put an end to his creation.

In 'The Humanoids,' the hero is Dr. Clay Forester, who is made aware of the Humanoid menace by a group of humans with various special abilities such as teleportation, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and telepathy. They refer to these types of abilities as "psychophysics". As the story proceeds, the reader becomes less and less sure who is right and who is wrong in the conflict. The Humanoids, though still a presence, are not the main foe for Dr. Forester. Instead he focuses on Frank Ironsmith, a former colleague who is helping the Humanoids, involved with Forester's wife Ruth, and is given much more freedom than other humans by the Humanoids. Although the Humanoids use some horrible methods of forcing people to be happy (e.g. drugs, surgery), they are not nearly as controlling as they were in `With Folded Hands....' One oddity between the two stories is that Williamson introduces a different creator of the Humanoids, whose name is Warren Mansfield.

These two stories are definitely worth reading for anyone interested in Science Fiction. `The Humanoids' rated 27th in 1952 for science fiction books, and tied for 18th in 1956 on the Astounding/Analog All-Time Polls. `With Folded Hands...' tied for 32nd in 1999 on the Locus All-Time Poll of novelettes.

THE HUMANOIDS is one of the unquestionable classics of the science fiction genre, and arguably the most important novel ever written about robots. The core idea of ultra sleek robots who arrive on a planet "to serve and protect" the planets inhabitants to the most logical extreme of that directive was brilliant and extraordinarily innovative when the book was published in the late 1940s. As such, absolutely no one even remotely interested in science fiction can afford not to read this great novel.

Unfortunately, aside from the core concept and several excellent characters, including the marvelously conceived humanoids themselves, I found a few elements in this story to be somewhat disagreeable. Others may not find them so, but I did, and they somewhat marred my enjoyment of the novel. First, the main character of the novel was, to me, was an unpleasant individual. Now, it is entirely correct that it is important to the novel's plot that he not be especially likable. Nonetheless, he was a somewhat unpleasant character, and spending time with him even on a fictional level was not as much fun as one might like. I also was unhappy with the way the romantic elements in the novel developed. They struck me as quite implausible. Finally, I very much did not like the ending of the novel. Unfortunately, I cannot here go into my reasons without giving away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that I am not certain that I would want to live in the world that the novel apparently endorses in its ending.

I will add that one character is one of my favorites in all of sci-fi, the wonderfully eccentric, amazing enigmatic Underhill. Williamson does a great job in Underhill of producing a character who is simultaneously marvelously innocent and suspiciously sinister at the same time. After I finished the book, his character remained far more vivid in my memory than any of the others.

Science fiction has always strived to reveal something about human nature, and this disturbing book achieves this goal like no other. It casts a new light upon what it is people really want, and what happiness really means; it makes one question some of one's deep values and beliefs. Quite some time after this book a sequel was published, "The Humanoid Touch". It is just as disturbing, partially because having read the first novel, I think the point of view of the author, or perhaps better, the 'implied author' has changed. This in no way decreases the value of the books, which are a must for any sci-fi reader.

Jack Williamson had the longest career of any writer in the history of Science Fiction; he published his first story in 1927 and his last novel in 2005. This novel is one of the highlights of his career, and a true classic of the genre.

I have little to add to the numerous favorable reviews already posted of this book. But it is important to note what is, and what isn't, in this Kindle edition.

Williamson dealt with the Humanoids in two works-- a 1947 novelette in Astounding called "With Folded Hands," and a 1948 novel, originally serialized in Astounding under the title "And Searching Mind," later published in book form as "The Humanoids." Still later, the two works were published as one book, again under the title of "The Humanoids."

This Kindle e-book includes ONLY the 1948 novel; "With Folded Hands" is NOT here.

The 1948 novel holds up very well on its own; you don't need the earlier novelette to undestand it. But if you want both pieces of the saga, you will have to go for the old-fashioned book form: The Humanoids: A Novel, because "With Folded Hands" does not seem to be currently available for the Kindle.

This not just a story about some humanoid robots taking over the world/universe, Jack tries to answer the question, "Has technology made the world a fundamentally better place to live?". In THE HUMANOIDS, once again a scientific discovery is misused by technology to develop a super-weapon, a bomb capable of turning all matter within a preset radius, directly into energy. So despite advances in technology, the world was preparing to repeat the age-old cycle of rise and ruin along with their enemies, only this time there is a difference: the humanoids offer to create a benevolent despotism and to "serve and obey and save men from harm", although not necessarily in that order. They are voted in but the Old School people find they don't like the thought of giving up all control and they wind up getting drugged in order to keep them safe and happy.

THE HUMANOIDS is about one of those people, Dr Forester, trying to escape and avoid becoming a victim to the humanoids "smother you with kindness" strategy. Forester learns that the only way he can do that is through "psychophysical" or paranormal powers of the mind, something the humanoids do not have...yet. So Dr Forester learns the scientific basis behind teleportation, telurgy, and clairvoyance and attempts to use his new found powers to destroy the humanoids. Dr Forester fails for two reasons, (1) he does not have the mental poise or peace to commit such a crime because (2) psychophysical energy requires mental poise and peace in order to use it since it is the basic creative force of the universe and cannot be used to destroy other people. Once again, a new technology rises up and is misused to try and ruin the world, answering the question if technology can make the world a fundamentally better place and the answer is "Hell no!". The basic problem isn't with technology, but with humans. The dark side of humans is too much for them to overcome, even with the most advanced technology.

The point that Jack Williamson is making then is that humans, by themselves, will never be able to stop themselves from ruining the world, and the only way humans will ever eliminate their dark side is to replace it with a better side -- and neither thing can ever take place without it being forced onto us by an outside party that has no dark side to begin with.

Williamson was a late arrival to the Golden Age, although he had written many pieces prior to this book of 1948. He still managed to complement it perfectly with this book. It is loaded with ideas, action and suspense. It is also written in a rather bland style, with wooden characters, as was typical of that time (with few exceptions). It's a tough task to try to evaluate it by today's standards, but at the time it must have seemed fresh with fantastic speculations mixed with some current science and ideas. It's a story about a grand struggle of man versus machine. The machine here is "humanoid", and the question contemplated is whether the humanoids are sinister, or if they are even capable of good or evil intentions. "Cybernetics" is a term used in the story, and that was a fresh term for sure when this was written. First used in a science context by the mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1947, it is explored here in terms of the humanoid and its crudely developed "intelligence" against the pitfalls of human intelligence.

The book explores cybernetics as it tells the story of mechanical and biological control and communications between humans and humanoids. They struggle to exist together within the constraints of each being's ability to act, understand and communicate. Are the humanoids plotting control of the human race, or are they simply acting upon rigid but poorly designed instructions from their human designer? It's an interesting question that keeps the reader guessing about their true nature and intentions, if they have any. The human response provides the struggle and the suspense, as a few suspicious people desperately try to save humanity and what it is to be human, despite the promising temptations that the humanoids seem to offer. The themes here were often repeated in subsequent decades. Are machines potentially dangerous? Can they learn ambition? Or are they limited to the role of human tools, with imagined qualities reflecting their human creators? There are references in these reviews to the dark ending. It is unsettling from a human point of view. To the humanoids, a case is made that it may be just another day at the office. The office door, of course, contains only one name. That of the human CEO. This is a book of ideas, and it deserves the status of the Golden Age, with all its newly discovered flowering ideas in the untended science fiction garden. Weeds did of course grow, but not for awhile.

Williamson creates a unique view of robots in the future. Humans create robots to help them with their work only to find things go awry. What makes this book great is the way it won't make you feel good by the end. That may seem paradoxical but it turns out to be refreshing and unique.

The late 1940s was a period of remarkable creativity for future sci-fi Grand Master Jack Williamson. July '47 saw the release of his much-acclaimed short story "With Folded Hands" in the pages of "Astounding Science-Fiction," followed by the tale's two-part serialized sequel, "And Searching Mind," in that influential magazine's March and April 1948 issues. "Darker Than You Think," Williamson's great sci-fi/fantasy/horror hybrid, was released later in 1948, and 1949 saw the publication of "And Searching Mind" in hardcover form, and retitled "The Humanoids." "With Folded Hands" had been a perfect(ly downbeat) short story that introduced us to the Humanoids, sleek black robots invented by a technician named Sledge on planet Wing IV. The robots' built-in Prime Directive (hmmm...why does that phrase seem so familiar?) is "To Serve and Obey, And Guard Men From Harm." Unfortunately, this leaves mankind with very little to do, as the mechanicals prevent humans from participating in anything that might be potentially dangerous; in other words, just about everything! Sledge's efforts to wipe out the master brain on Wing IV that is controlling the billions of self-replicating mechanicals are, sadly, fruitless, which sets us up for the action in "The Humanoids."


Flash forward 90 years. (Actually, this novel takes place a good 6,000 years from our present day, the reader infers.) On an unnamed planet, a physicist named Forester, head of a secret government project that is constructing a prototype "rhodomagnetic" bomb, comes to realize that the newly arrived Humanoids on his world are a bane, not a boon, to mankind. This realization is strengthened when the robots give his wife the brain-wiping drug known as euphoride to keep her happy, and when his beloved pet project is dismantled by the Humanoids as being too dangerous for men to engage in. Forester joins a band of "paraphysical" misfits--gifted with the powers of clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy and teleportation--to fight the Humanoids and alter their Prime Directive by going to the distant world of Wing IV itself. Readers expecting a traditional humans vs. ray-zapping evil robots story (such as Williamson's 1939 novel "After World's End") may be surprised to learn that this engrossing tale is anything but. The robots here are not at all presented as evil; if anything, they are guilty of killing mankind's spirit with too much kindness, and their benevolence is ultimately a mixed blessing at best. In the book's ambivalently downbeat ending, a case is made for the Humanoids' positive aspects (by Sledge himself, here, for some reason, renamed Warren Mansfield) that is almost a convincing one. Depending on the reader's outlook, I suppose a society in which the individual is free to do nothing but laze, paint, think and play (no sports, though; too dangerous, say the Humanoids!) could be regarded as a paradise or a hell. "The Humanoids," besides offering those convincing (?) sociological arguments, also gives us some impressive pseudoscience to explain the very nature of reality, extrasensory abilities and the binding forces that hold nature together. "Rhodomagnetism" is a made-up word that Williamson uses often to describe a source of energy based on a different triad of elements than electromagnetism, and before things are done, Forester comes up with a group of equations involving "platinomagnetism" that allows its possessor to gain various "paramechanical" abilities. This use of arcane scientific equations to cause changes in the power of the mind was very reminiscent, for this reader, of Henry Kuttner's classic short novel from 1946, "The Fairy Chessmen"; as in that earlier tale, "The Humanoids" grows increasingly "way out" as it progresses. It is a finely written, suspenseful, action-packed yarn that is at the same time chock-full of interesting scientific speculations. It has been called Williamson's "greatest science fiction novel," and while I cannot claim to have read more than 1/10 of the author's nearly 80-year output (!), the greatness of the novel is hard to deny. I would never dream of revealing whether or not Forester & Co. are successful in their efforts against the Humanoids, but can report that the author did come out with a very belated sequel, "The Humanoid Touch," in 1980. Say no more, right?

I was surprised this book does not have more reviews and a large entry on Wikipedia. The Humanoids deserves a wider audience, it compares favorably to 1984 and Brave New World and is entertaining and suspenseful to boot. It is truly great science fiction. It is depressing though, perhaps that accounts for its lack of popularity. The book is an important commentary on the nature of Freedom. Moreover, those who blieve in God but wonder why (s)he is not more overtly benevolent, would do well to read this book.

Jack Williamson was one of the guiding lights of science fiction during the "golden age". His writing is always excellent. That said, this has to be one of his greatest achievements ever. It's dark, hopeless and tragic, but still filled with the possible triumph of the human spirit. The main story, "With Folded Hands", though, is one of the most touching pieces of writing I've ever read. Please, I beg of you, read this book. It is one of the greats.