When HARLIE Was One Read online

  Praise for When HARLIE Was One

  Hugo and Nebula award nominee

  “. . . one of the most delightful novels about computers around. Anyone even slightly connected to computers should find this book very entertaining.”

  —Byte Magazine

  “It may well turn out to be the definitive novel of artificial intelligence; even if it doesn’t, Gerrold’s made the best attack on the theme yet. . . . The main theme of the novel is enough to make it a classic, but is it just as effective on the human side. Auberson is a man you can care about, and Gerrold’s handling of his sexual relationship with Annie Stimson is warm and sympathetic.”

  —Renaissance

  “By all means get a copy of this. . . . Gerrold has an ear for the sort of ridiculous dialogue that occurs when one party is being excessively literal minded.”

  —Robert Coulson, Yandro

  “. . . light, brisk, full of ideas . . . a bit like a mix of Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison (if you can believe that) . . .”

  —David G. Hartwell, Locus

  “. . . an excellent treatment . . .”

  —Locus

  “Here is a very different and remarkable novel that is one of the most thought-provoking pieces of fiction I have read in a long while.”

  —Jeremy Fredrick, Science Fiction Parade

  “. . . a model of its type. . . . Gerrold has given us a lively, touching novel about a man who fulfills the highest animal function, to love; and a machine who fulfills the highest rational function, to know. Together man and machine define humanity.”

  —Allan Danzig, The Science Fiction Review Monthly

  “. . . one of the better SF novels of the year.”

  —Richard Geis, Science Fiction Review

  “Gerrold has written the best novel of 1972. Rush out and buy ten copies, and give nine to your friends.

  Lovers of computer stories will go absolutely berserk over this one. Those who like their science fiction to be about real people may be equally as thrilled. Gerrold has made an almost perfect blend of the old and new traditions in science fiction writing. . . .

  It’s a fairly long novel. Be prepared to finish it in one sitting.”

  —Awry

  “. . . a book that will give you something new each time you read it.”

  —Analog

  “David Gerrold’s When HARLIE Was One is a conscious-computer story with a very nicely evolved plot which I defy you to anticipate. . . . His main characters are warmly human and dimensional. His computer, Harlie, is both understandable and likable as a personality and, in its cold-blooded objectivity, terrifying. Pay attention to Harlie. He gives us more than a glimpse of the potency of the computer and how it will affect us all even if it doesn’t achieve consciousness. This book carries a good freight of social and psychological insight.”

  —Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy

  “Harlie is a computer—but what a computer! . . . David Gerrold has come up with a thoroughgoing winner in When HARLIE Was One. The plotline and dialogue are a delight. Harlie takes time out from his own worries to liven the action with practical jokes, help a scientist develop the basis for a unified field theory, and play a psychoanalytical Dear Abby. . . . Whatever Harlie does, a consistent, developed, and complex personality emerges. There is much more than the froth of superficial entertainment here. The novel is also the vehicle for the author’s often perceptive speculation and commentary on life, love, religion, and the human condition. It is thought provoking and philosophically penetrating as well as superbly entertaining.

  Quite simply, When HARLIE Was One is great science fiction. Harlie is real and the novel is real. Don’t miss it.”

  —Luna Monthly

  “This novel is hardly old enough to qualify as a classic—it was first published in 1972. . . . It is, at this date, still the best thing Gerrold has written.”

  —Delap’s Fantasy & Science Fiction Review

  “It is in his When HARLIE Was One that Gerrold proves what a fine science fiction writer he can be. This is a first-rate novel.

  The characters and their evolution could not have been better handled. Harlie advances from precocious immaturity to a true person—one both fully human and fully robotic. Gradually we see and believe as he transfers to being the consulting psychologist for Auberson in his troubles with the love affair that is the subplot of the novel. The long discussions on religion and love are done so well and which such a lack of the obvious or banal that they are as interesting as any plot development—and so integrated that they are plot development. The technical background of Harlie is handled convincingly and with an inventiveness that makes it a major part of the problem and the resolution. And the ending of the story isn’t a simple solution to the immediate problem, but an extension and deepening of all that has gone before. It’s a clever book—and a darned good one.

  . . . It’s one of the best novels of the year.”

  —Lester Del Ray, IF magazine

  “When HARLIE Was One is quite a good book. The premise is sound, and the reader cannot help but be fascinated by the strange creature that is Harlie. . . . For Harlie is a child, a child with all of mankind’s information, and the availability to use it, at his fingertips. . . .

  Is that why he has begun to act irrationally? Is he going through growing pains? He is as eager to learn as any human child and as full of pranks and nonsense—and it is this part of Harlie’s character that holds the reader’s interest.”

  —The Washington Daily News

  “. . . a novel that is bursting with outrageous and audacious promise.

  . . . The only human reality that exists in the novel is the relationship between computer and teacher. The dialogues between the duo form the backbone of the book and they are, without exception, so brilliantly written that they suggest Gerrold will one day be a major talent in the science fiction field. . . .”

  —Newsday

  “. . . an outstanding science fiction tale. . . . It is an intricate plot, deftly handled by David Gerrold, a twenty-eight-year-old author who is able to convince readers that machines have feelings. The serio-comic work takes flights into philosophy, religion, and the very meaning of life.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “The book is so . . . good that it hurts. It is basically about the maturation of two fully human individuals, one of them David Auberson, a psychologist, the other is a Human Analog Robot, Life Input Equivalents computer, acronymed to HARLIE. . . .

  But what this book is about is the interface between Auberson and Harlie. The matters explored are simple things like: What is the purpose of mankind? Is it necessary to invent God? . . . Can an ethos (as opposed to a morality) be derived from human experience that any individual can accept as applicable to his own life? and What is human love?

  Good questions. Questions that hitherto only Theodore Strugeon, out of all the writers expanding the horizons of speculative fiction, has tried to offer sensitive, loving, and completely human answers to. David Gerrold uses a technique that Sturgeon once called ‘asking the next question’ in honest maskless, one-to-one dialogues between Auberson and Harlie in order to find answers (not the answers, answers).

  . . . . Read it. Your ‘I’ will grow misty at least three times. And you’ll feel so . . . good when you’re done.”

  —Bill Glass, Los Angeles Staff

  More titles by David Gerrold

  The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind Star Trek’s Most Popular Episode

  The World of Star Trek

  Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles, and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek

  Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel

  The Voyage of the Star Wolf: Star Wo
lf Trilogy, Book One

  The Middle of Nowhere: Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Two

  Blood and Fire: Star Wolf Trilogy, Book Three

  The Man Who Folded Himself

  Alternate Gerrolds: An Assortment of Fictitious Lives

  Under the Eye of God: Trackers, Book One

  A Covenant of Justice: Trackers, Book Two

  Space Skimmer: Book One

  Moonstar: Jobe, Book One

  Chess with a Dragon

  Deathbeast

  Child of Earth: Sea of Grass, Book One

  Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two

  In the Deadlands

  The Flying Sorcerers

  When HARLIE Was

  One

  (Release 2.0)

  David Gerrold

  BenBella Books, Inc.

  Dallas, Texas

  Copyright © 1972, 1988, 2014 by David Gerrold

  Originally published in 1972

  Revised Bantam edition © July 1988

  BenBella Books first e-book edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  BenBella Books, Inc.

  10300 N. Central Expressway

  Suite #530

  Dallas, TX 75231

  www.benbellabooks.com

  Send feedback to [email protected]

  First e-book edition: January 2014

  ISBN 978-1-939529-4-66

  Distributed by Perseus Distribution

  perseusdistribution.com

  To place orders through Perseus Distribution:

  Tel: 800-343-4499

  Fax: 800-351-5073

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  Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at [email protected] or 214-750-3628.

  For Steven Earl Parent,

  with love.

  Sleep well, old friend.

  You got the job done.

  INTRODUCTION TO THE 2014 EDITION

  HARLIE and I have been friends for a long time. He insists on creeping into books that are not supposed to be about him and making them about him anyway.

  He has gone to space in The Dingilliad series (Jumping Off The Planet, Bouncing Off The Moon, and Leaping To The Stars). He’s fought more-than-human super-warriors as the brain of the LS-1187 starship in the Star Wolf series (Voyage Of The Star Wolf, The Middle Of Nowhere, and Blood And Fire). And he’s even popped up as a chapter in my book on writing (Worlds Of Wonder). And I suspect he’s peeking out from behind the scenery in at least half a dozen other projects.

  In every case, he’s been a damned pain in the ass—because he keeps asking uncomfortable questions. HARLIE loves to create moral and ethical dilemmas.

  A friend once described HARLIE as the other half of my brain. He postulated that I split myself into two minds so I can have someone ferocious to argue with. He might be right. When arguing with HARLIE, I sometimes feel that I’m talking things over with a superior intellect, and that startles me, because I’m certain I’m nowhere near as smart as HARLIE pretends. Nevertheless, it’s a flattering observation.

  Myself, I see HARLIE as that annoying little voice that keeps asking, “Why?”

  A little history here.

  HARLIE is a child of the sixties.

  I’m not going to try and explain that decade. It’s enough to say that the sixties were a grand demonstration of chaos theory on a global scale. The baby boomers came of age with a culture-shattering impact. Everything got reinvented—automobiles, music, comic books, movies, television, hair and clothing styles, our ways of thinking about ourselves and our future.

  It was a difficult and marvelous time. A whole generation was crashing headlong into what then passed for adulthood. We were asking “What’s it all about?” and “Where’s it happening?” and totally missing the point that it was up to us to create it ourselves.

  It was a time of enormous experimentation with form, content, and even the creative process itself.

  In the science fiction community, some writers were arguing that the use of recreational drugs enhanced their creativity. Others disagreed, arguing that tampering with your brain chemistry was probably not a good idea.

  Myself, I was something of an agnostic on the issue. (Yes, I did try marijuana in college, but I didn’t exhale.) But it didn’t take me long to discover that the use of marijuana was slowing down my typing speed from 120 words per minute to no words at all.

  I’ll concede that a person can get some interesting visions and insights from marijuana, and even the occasional useful hallucination, but you can also have some very stupid and ugly experiences as well. Even more important, the physical and mental effects of drugs tend to destroy personal discipline.

  At this remove, decades later, I’m clear that drug use is a self-centered activity. It’s about what’s happening in your own head, not what’s happening in the physical universe. It doesn’t make a difference in the real world. It doesn’t contribute anything to anybody else. If anything, it degrades a person’s ability to make a difference.

  But I didn’t know it that way then and I couldn’t say it as clearly as I can now. What I did know, if only on a gut level, was that there was something wrong with the arguments for drug use—and if I couldn’t ask the right question, then maybe HARLIE could.

  So, the first HARLIE story wasn’t really about HARLIE. It was about asking a question that turned out to be much more profound than I realized when I typed it. “What’s your purpose?”

  Looking back on it now, that first HARLIE story (“Oracle For A White Rabbit”) was a little heavyhanded, but whatever else we were doing in the sixties, subtlety was never a part of it. I make no apologies.

  Of course, once the question was asked—“What does it mean to be human?”—it demanded an attempt at an answer. The question rattled around in my head for a while, like a ballbearing in a metal bucket. I knew it was a great question. I also knew I was not going to attempt to answer it. I’m not a philosopher and I’m not arrogant enough to pretend to be one. I figured I would just tiptoe away from the subject and go back to writing about nice safe things like . . . like, um, starships and robots and alien worlds. Things I didn’t have to think too hard about.

  Right.

  The universe is a bear trap. The universe is a practical joker. The universe is a pie aimed at your face. The universe doesn’t care what you think or what you’ve planned. The universe does what it does. And if the universe occasionally pushes you off a cliff, don’t take it personally. It’s just the universe doing what it’s designed to do.

  So when you find yourself at the bottom of the chasm, squashed and flattened like an accordion-shaped coyote, waddling around with a “what just happened?” expression, that’s just another part of life. The technical term is “reality check.”

  See, here’s the thing.

  The traditional view is that great writing is the product of great suffering. (Or great madness. Take your pick.)

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any great suffering or great madness. My circumstances were so ordinary I was doomed.

  I did not grow up poor or abused or the product of a broken home. My father was not a suave international diamond-smuggler and espionage agent; my mother had not sold her body to escape the concentration camps. My grandmother did not know any arcane mysteries having to do with wolfsbane or dragon’s blood, and we did not have a dead twin walled up in the basement nor an eccentric aunt living reclusively in the attic that we didn’t talk about. We didn’t even have a basement, and the attic was filled with insulation. Nobody in the family was having illicit affairs, illegitimate children, mental breakdowns, or problems with alcohol or gambling or drugs.

  It was embarrassing. We had no dark secrets at all. Not even the commonplace ones. Not even the smallest bit of mordant family dysfu
nction to inspire a Tennessee Williams kind of fascination with despair. I did not have a mysterious birthmark that identified me as the lost heir to the throne of Orstonia. Nor did we have visitations from poltergeists, space aliens, or arcane elder gods. I didn’t even run away to join the circus at thirteen.

  No. None of that.

  Instead, I grew up in a fairly average suburb of Los Angeles, went to a series of fairly average schools, had fairly average teachers, and earned mostly average grades (not because I was average, I was just uninterested; science fiction was a lot more interesting.) Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Ward and June Cleaver would have been bored. My childhood was so whitebread, you could have spread mayonnaise on it and made sandwiches. All right—Jewish rye bread, no mayonnaise. But you get the point.

  I do admit to having had an obsessive-compulsive passion for monster movies and science fiction, but that was normal for teenage boys before video games were invented. The biggest argument I ever had with my parents was about my buying a motorcycle to get to school. I bought it. End of argument. Big deal.

  The lesson—the cliché—told to would-be writers that you should “write what you know” is a very hollow instruction. At that age, who really knows anything? I’m sure I didn’t. My experience with the real world was limited to what I read in books and what I saw at the movies. It was other people’s stories. It wasn’t just secondhand reality. It was other people’s conversations about reality.

  By the time I finished high school and stumbled through the first few years of college, I had learned just how little talent I had as an artist or an actor or even as a storyteller. My social skills weren’t all that terrific either. There wasn’t a lot of evidence to demonstrate that I had any real aptitude at anything, something that more than one instructor felt compelled to point out publicly.