Heechee Rendezvous

Pohl, Frederik. Heechee Rendezvous. New York: Del Rey-Ballantine, 1984. [S. F.] Book Club Edition.

Significant characters are computer programs, as are the two narrators: the Albert Einstein AI program and a "vastened" Robinette Broadhead, the hero of the Gateway trilogy, whose personality is computer-preserved after his death near the end of the novel. See Gateway and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. Rev. Donald M. Hassler, FR #70 (Aug. 1984): 21.

Note initially and for later consideration:

The conversation between "Robin" Broadhead and Sigfrid von Shrink, his psychoanalytic program (ch. 1), where Sigfrid comes through as more sophisticated than his human client on psychology and ethics. Broadhead ends this sequence with "I do hate it when my computer programs talk to me about morality. Especially when they are right" (p. 16), which Sigfrid is.

The side-bar telling us in a small AI data dump that "The Heechee learned fairly early in their technological phase to store the intelligences of dead or dying Heechee in inorganic systems. That was how the Dead Men came to be stored to provide company for the boy Wan, and it was an application of that technology that produced Robin's Here After company. For the Heechee (if I may venture a possibly not unbiased opinion) it may have been a mistake. Since they were able to use the dead minds of Heechee ancestors to store and process data, they we not very good at true artificial-intelligence systems, capable of far greater power and flexibility. Like — well — like me" (p. 98; ch. 10). There is a historical sense here, plus high-level analysis, and very human-like egotistic Pride; cf. and contrast HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey as novel and film.

RDE, Initial Compiler; expanded 14June20