Supertoys Trilogy by Brian Aldiss.
Title: Supertoys Trilogy.
Author: Brian Aldiss.
Genre: Literature, fiction, short stories, science fiction, AI, dystopian, parenthood.
Country: London, U.K..
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1969 (this collection 2014).
Summary: A collection of 3 short stories that make up the series. Supertoys Last All Summer Long takes place in the far future and tells of a woman who has a problem connecting with and loving her A.I. child, David, and David, in turn, struggling with his beloved mother's estrangement and the concept of his own realness. In Supertoys When Winter Comes, as David's mother mourns the loss of a much-awaited real child, she accidentally shatters David's understanding of himself, and with it both of their worlds. In Supertoys in Other Season, as David struggles to adjust to Throwaway Town, a place where disused robots end up, his father fails in his career and begins to slowly realize David may be the only thing of value he can have left in his life.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ David looked up at her and grinned without replying. Seizing the flower, he ran with it across the lawn and disappeared behind the kennel where the mowervator crouched, ready to cut or sweep or roll when the moment dictated. She stood alone on her impeccable plastic gravel path.
She had tried to love him.
♥ Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living-room arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the manic sloth it reserves for children, the insane and wives whose husbands are away improving the world. Almost by reflex, she reached out and changed the wavelength of her windows. The garden faded; in its place, the city centre rose by her left hand, full of crowding people, blow-boats, and buildings - but she kept the sound down. She remained alone. An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.
♥ "Though three-quarters of our overcrowded world is starving, we are lucky here to have more than enough, thanks to population control. Obesity’s our problem, not malnutrition. I guess there’s nobody round this table who doesn’t have a Crosswell working for him in the small intestine, a perfectly safe parasite tape-worm that enables its host to eat up to fifty per cent more food and still keep his or her figure. Right?"
General nods of agreement.
"Our miniature dinosaurs are almost equally stupid. Today, we launch an intelligent synthetic life-form - a full-size serving-man.
"Not only does he have intelligence, he has a controlled amount of intelligence. We believe people would be afraid of a being with a human brain. Our serving-man has a small computer in his cranium.
"There have been mechanicals on the market with minicomputers for brains - plastic things without life, supertoys - but we have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh. ..Amid all the triumphs of our civilisation - yes, and amid the crushing problems of overpopulation too - it is sad to reflect how many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them; he will always answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.
"For the future, we plan more models, male and female - some of them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! - of more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.
"Not only will they possess their own computers, capable of individual programming: they will be linked to the Ambient, the World Data Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be banished for ever!"
He sat down to enthusiastic applause. Even the synthetic serving-man, sitting at the table dressed in an unostentatious suit, applauded with gusto.
♥ David was staring out of the window. "Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren’t real things?"
The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."
"I wonder if time is good. I don’t think Mummy likes time very much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by her. Is time real, Teddy?"
"Clocks tell the time. Clocks are real. Mummy has clocks so she must like them. She has a clock on her wrist next to her dial."
David had started to draw an airliner on the back of his letter. "You and I are real, Teddy, aren’t we?"
The bear’s eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are real, David." It specialised in comfort.
♥ "Henry, Henry - oh, my darling, I was in despair… But I’ve dialled the afternoon post and - you’ll never believe it! Oh, it’s wonderful!"
"For heaven’s sake, woman, what’s wonderful?"
He caught a glimpse of the heading on the stat in her hand, still warm from the wall-receiver; Ministry of Population. He felt the colour drain from his face in sudden shock and hope.
"Monica… oh… Don’t tell me our number’s come up!"
"Yes, my darling, yes, we’ve won this week’s parenthood lottery! We can go ahead and conceive a child at once!"
He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strictly controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.
~~Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
♥ The pair of them looked up when Monica appeared. She stooped, picked up the book and snapped it shut.
"Haven’t you tired of this toy yet?" she asked. "You have had it for three years. You must know exactly what’s going to happen to that silly little elephant."
David hung his head, although he was used to his mother’s disapproval.
"We just like what’s going to happen, Mummy. I bet if we watch it again Elly will roll right into the river. It’s so funny."
"But we won’t watch it if you don’t want us to," Teddy added.
She repented her outburst; after all, she knew their limitations. Setting the vidbook down on the carpet, she said with a sigh, "You’ll never grow up."
"I am trying to grow up, Mummy. This morning, I watched a natural history science program on DTV."
Monica said that that was good. She asked what David had learnt. He told her he had learnt about dolphins. "We are part of the natural world, aren’t we, Mummy?"
When he lifted up his arms to her for a cuddle, she backed away, her mind choked with the thought of being imprisoned for ever in an eternal childhood, never developing, never escaping…
"I expect Mummy’s ever so busy," said David to Teddy, when Monica had left.
They sat there, the two of them, looking at each other. Smiling.
♥ Scene: a restaurant only for the wealthy. Boast: a real window in the ceiling, letting in summer light sullied only slightly by pollution.
Petrushka and Henry, with their ladies, were tucking in to two small suckling pigs, turning on spits beside their table. The pigs sizzled and dripped goodness. The diners washed everything down with vintage champagne.
♥ Fearful, she approached the stairs. She must call Henry for help. Henry must return home.
A brilliant crackling sounded. The intense splutter of freed electricity. Dazzling light. Darkness.
"David!" But she was falling.
David had struck the house’s control centre, wrenching it from the wall in a fury of pain and despair. Everything stopped playing.
The house disappeared, and the garden with it. David stood in the midst of a skeletal structure of wired scaffolding, bedded here and there in breeze blocks. Rubble lay underfoot. Acrid smoke drifted at ground level.
After a long stretch of immobility, he made his way forward, treading where the house had been, treading where the snowy garden had been, where he had played so often with his friend Teddy.
He stood in an alleyway, in an unknown world. Old pavement was slimy underfoot. Weeds grew between slabs. The detritus of an earlier epoch lay before him. He kicked a crushed can labelled ‘oka-col’.
A drowsy light prevailed over all; the summer’s day was coming to a close. He could not see clearly but, with his right eye, caught sight of a sickly rose growing by a crumbling brick wall.
Crossing to the plant, he plucked a bud. Its beauty and softness reminded him once more of Mummy.
Over her body he said, "I am human, Mummy. I love you and I feel sad just like real people, so I must be human… Mustn’t I?"
~~Supertoys When Winter Comes.
♥ Throwaway Town sprawled near the heart of the city. David made his way there, led by a large Fixer-Mixer. The Fixer-Mixer had many hands and arms of various dimensions. He kept them snugged down on his rusty carapace. Walking on extensible spider legs, he towered above David.
As they went along, David asked, "Why are you so big?"
"The world’s big, David. So I am big."
After a silence, the five-year-old said, "The world has been big since my Mummy died."
"Machines don’t have mummies."
"I wish you to know I am not a machine."
♥ Throwaway was entered down a steep slope, and partly hidden from the going human world by a high wall of breeze-blocks. The road into this junk town was wide and easy. Everything inside was irregular. Strange shapes were the order of the day. Many shapes moved, or could move, or might move. Their colours were many, some sporting huge letters or numerals. Rusty brown was a favourite. They specialised in scratches, huge dents, shattered glass, broken panels. They stood in puddles and leaked rust.
This was the land of the obsolete. To Throwaway came or were dumped all the old models of automatics, robots, androids and other machines that had ceased to be useful to busy mankind. Here was everything that had once worked in some way, from toasters and electric carving knives to derricks and computers that could count only up to infinity-minus-one. The poor Fixer-Mixer had lost one of its grabbers and would never again haul a tonne of cement.
It was a town of a kind. Every junked object helped every other junked object. Every old-model pocket calculator could calculate something useful, if it was only how wide a lane should be left between two blocks of scrapped automobilities to allow passage for wheelies and motormowers.
A tired old supermarket servitor took David into his care. They shared the burnt-out shell of a refrigeration unit.
♥ "I would like it even more if only Teddy could watch with me."
"It’s the same dance, lad, whether Teddy is here or not."
"But you don’t understand…"
"I understand our dance is clever even if nobody is watching. Once hundreds of real people used to watch us dancing. But it was different then."
"It’s different now," David said.
♥ David looked round. The Dancing Devlins stood nearby. They were not dancing. David called out a goodbye to them. The Dancing Devlins simply stood where they were. They had never been programmed to say goodbye. It was not quite the same as taking a bow.
As David climbed into his father’s car, they began to perform their dance. It was their favourite dance. It was the dance they had performed a hundred thousand times before.
♥ Henry Swinton was no longer rich. He no longer had a career. He no longer had women around. He no longer had ambition.
But he had time.
♥ Henry seized the boy and held him tightly, arms wrapped around him. "David, you were an early product of my first mech company, Synthank. You have since been superseded. You only think you are happy or sad. You only think you loved Teddy or Monica."
"Did you love Monica, Daddy?"
He sighed heavily. "I thought I did."
♥ Henry put David in the auto, telling him that his obsession with being human would count as a neurosis if he were human. There were humans who had illnesses where they imagined they were machines.
♥ They had gained the production floor, where the product stood ready for packaging and exporting. David came forward, staring, his eyes wide.
He confronted a thousand Davids. All looking alike. All dressed alike. All standing alert and alike. All silent, staring ahead. A thousand replicas of himself. Unliving.
For the first time David really understood.
This was what he was. A product. Only a product. His mouth fell open. He froze. He could not move. The gyroscope ceased within him. He fell backwards to the floor.
♥ David and Teddy stared at each other in wonder. Then they fell into each other’s arms.
It was almost human.
~~Supertoys in Other Seasons.