It's the 80's. Where's our Rocket Packs?

One of the most charming things about old science fiction shows is seeing how people in the past imagined computers of the distant future.  Star Trek with all those knobs and buttons and the talking computer with the mechanical voice and those little cards that sort of looked like floppy disks, for example.  (I love the original Star Trek--when I was younger, Captain Kirk was my hero--actually, truth be told, he still is my hero, but that is the sort of information that makes my kids visibly cringe when I tell people.)

Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man has that same feel.  This was one of his earliest novels, published in 1972.  Almost all Crichton's novels are worth reading because he did his homework--he incorporates scientific advances nicely, and his speculations about the trend in technology usually make for interesting novels.  But, reading this particular book 40 years later was less like talking to somewhere at the cutting edge of technology than humoring someone who has been living under a rock for the last half-century.

[If you have never read Crichton, try Jurassic Park, Next, or Prey--all three are excellent.   If you like the idea of a popular novel taking apart the modern environmentalist movement, then read State of Fear. If you like novels which are terribly dated, try Rising Sun.]

The thesis of the book is that computing power is hitting a wall because they simply can't get the computers any smaller and faster, so they will have to start building computers out of something much like brain cells.  The story is the first attempt to directly link the human brain to a computer.  The whole technology of the novel is really quite silly in retrospect.  But, this is the amazing thing about the last 40 years--nobody in the early 1970s could even imagine the computing power we would be using today.  My iPod has more computing power than my first desktop computer had in 1989, and that desktop in 1989 was more powerful than anything that existed in 1972.  So, no wonder the novel feels dated.

Reading a 1972 prophecy about the future of computers was the only good thing in this novel, though.  As a story, it is easily one of Crichton's worst.  The doctors on the cutting edge decide to hook up a computer to a guy who suffers from psychomotor epilepsy, which causes his brain to shut down at which point he goes into a murderous rage.  Having killed someone, the patient agrees to have his brain wired up to dampen the impulses which send his brain into a murderous state.  But, it turns out our patient is also a bit paranoid that computers are trying to take over the world.  Our doctors decide to proceed anyway.  So, a guy who is paranoid about computers taking over the world is wired up to a computer which will be sending signals directly into his brain. Out of hundreds of millions of people who could have this operation, our doctors pick a guy who is paranoid about computers.  Yep.  The computer doesn't work right, the guy escapes, and predictably goes into murderous rages.  Our doctors then start hunting him down throughout LA (apparently the police were too busy to look for a raging lunatic who is running around murdering people).  The plot just gets worse from there.

Anyway, reading this book is like watching Space 1999.  On its own merits it isn't very good, but seeing how the past looked at the future in which we are now living is interesting.  For another take on the same theme, see here.