Mr. Spaceship
Dick, Philip K. "Mister Spaceship." Imagination Jan. 1953. Frequently collected[1] and legally available on line through Project Gutenberg.[2] Also available as an audiobook, which is our source here.[3]
Long short story or novelette significant generally as an early contribution to the mid-20th-c. debate on whether warfare is primarily a deeply engrained human trait — possibly a literal instinct — or an institution or a very strong and very bad habit. In terms of plot upshot,[4] "Mr. Spaceship" is a "shaggy God" story[5], specifically significant here for the nature of the "God." See for a minor motif of extending human life by transferring consciousness to complex machinery — the space ship — but more so for the image of that transfer as a brain in a vat in a box in a space ship, with the brain retaining consciousness and seizing control of the ship and, in a sense, control of human destiny. Story alludes specifically to debates over consciousness associated with the name Réne Descartes and explicitly contrasts the electro-mechanical relays of Terran weapon systems with the biologically-based weaponry of their alien opponents; the biologically-based weapons are faster and more flexible, and the human-brain/human-consciousness Mr. Spaceship would be even more effective, except that the story moves to try to raise a variety of humans who will avoid warfare.
RDE 21/I/16