The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1 (published 1976)

The Life and Times of Multivac (Science fiction by Isaac Asimov)



Assume the world has ended in catastrophe and ask what then of the literature of change The life and times of Multivac Copyright 1975 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. By Isaac Asimov Science fiction is the literature of change. It is the only form of fiction which, as a matter of definition, tells its story against the background of a society vastly different from our own, with the difference dependent on changes in science and technology. Since we live in a period of rapid change. science fiction has become the relevant literature of today, particularly to young people who must face such change for the rest of their lives. The attempt to work out reasonably changed societies led science-fiction writers to consider such matters as television, nuclear bombs, and interplanetary exploration long before most scientists and government leaders (let alone the general public) did so. This has lent science fiction an air of respectability. All these factors combined have even raised it to the ultimate, and somewhat dubious, height of academic acceptance. What's more, science fiction offers a technique of unlimited flexibility for dealing with today's problems. At the present moment, for instance, the question of man versus machine is exercising many minds. Argue the matter from the immediate standpoint of today and you will obscure it with numerous emotional hangups and side issues. Take it, instead, several centuries hence. Assume that today's world has ended in catastrophe but that the remnants of technology have saved the remnants of making.Assume that a new world has arisen in which the problem is stark and simple, in which men are few indeed and the machine powerful beyond present dreams. Now raise the same question of man versus machine, and we have ..."The life and times of Multivac." The whole world was interested. The whole world could watch. If anyone wanted to know how many did watch, Multivac could have told them. The great computer, Multivac kept track-as it did of everything. Multivac was the judge in this particular case, so coldly objective and purely upright that there was no need of prosecution or defense. There were only the accused, Simon Hines, and the evidence, which consisted, in part, of Ronald Bakst. Bakst watched, of course. In his case, it was compulsory. He would rather it were not, In his 10th decade, he was showing signs of age and his rumpled hair was distinctly gray. Noreen was not watching. She had said at the door, "If we had a friend left . . . ” She paused, then added, "Which I doubt!" and left. Bakst wondered if she would come back at all, but at the moment it didn't matter. Isaac Asimov is the author of many science books, both fact and fiction. His most recent fiction is "Tales of the Black Widowers." 111