The Pinocchio Syndrome : revisited

Abstract

In a previous paper, I explored the Pinocchio syndrome and the prosthetic impulse, focusing on Data and the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I described “the Pinocchio syndrome” as the urge for nonhuman beings to become human, while I followed Smith and Morra to identify “the prosthetic impulse” as the urge for humanity to augment mind and/or brain, using biological or mechanical augments. The desire to become human is a multibraided wish, and includes not only the yearning to attain a biologically human body, but also mental and psychological aspects. These include the desire to acquire “qualia,” that is, subjective conscious experiences, the expression of intentionality which implies the ability to truly understand and comprehend and react to surroundings and stimuli, as humans do, and an application of Abraham Maslow’s motivational pyramid, with a desire for selfactualization that embraces the desire to attain humanity. A much wider reading of the Pinocchio syndrome within the genre shows that sf’s reiteration of the desire to become more human or fully human is incredibly hubristic. It emphasizes an extraordinarily naïve and humanistic viewpoint that almost certainly cannot be shared by nonhuman beings whose abilities may not only differ from humanity’s, but may also exceed them, both physically and mentally. The history of prosthetics is ancient, as evidenced by the first known prosthesis, an artificial big toe dating from 1069 to 664 bce (Nerlich et al.). Prostheses in sf are used to attain posthuman or even trans human levels of existence. Such makeovers abound in sf narratives, for example, E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga includes the “Cyclan,” who constitute the villains in a total of 32 novels published from 1967 to 1997. The storyline is set in the distant future. The Cyclan are surgically altered human beings who are completely emotionless (and unable to have sex) so as to be better able to think logically. They also possess the ability to link minds with previously living Cyclan whose brains are preserved by the group. The Cyclan are willing to sacrifice any individual or group of individuals in pursuit of their goals. Androids and other sentient manufactured beings feature frequently in sf and some definitions would be helpful at this juncture. An android is an artificially created being that resembles a human being. The word derives from Greek andr-, “man or human” and the suffix -eides, from eidos, “species.” A robot is an entirely mechanical being, and a cyborg is an organic being that is mechanically and prosthetically enhanced. In the literature, the term android has been used to denote numerous different creations including robots, cyborgs, or artificially created organic beings that closely resemble humans. Androids derive from the marriage of two concepts: simulacra, devices that exhibit human likeness, and automata, devices that exhibit independence. The term was first used by Mathias Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838–89) in his work Tomorrow’s Eve (1886), featuring a mechanical robot. This terminology is ambiguous and overlapping, and for example, the robots in C˘apek’s R.U.R. (1921) are actually organic artificial humans. “Rosumovi Ume˘ líRoboti” is Czech for “Rossum’s Artificial Robots,” but is usually translated into English as “Rossum’s Universal Robots” in order to preserve the acronym. (In the original Czech, robota means drudgery.) Robots began to feature increasingly in sf with the formalization of the concepts embodied in Norbert Weiner’s seminal Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. It is worth recalling at this stage that “the robot and its ancestors and relatives have been used—at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—as a figure for collective anxieties about the dangers of science and technology” (Fitting, “Futurecop” 341). Asimov, however, popularized and de-monstered robots with his “three laws of robotics,” divorcing the robot from the popular pulp concepts of the latter-day equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, apt to run out of control at the slightest excuse.