The Knights of Arthur

Pohl, Frederik. "The Knights of Arthur." © 1957. Galaxy Science Fiction January 1958. Coll. The Frederik Pohl Omnibus. London: Gollancz, 1966. Tomorrow Times Seven. New York: Ballantine, 1959. Platinum Pohl. New York: Tor, 2005.

Post-Apocalypse tale set in a depopulated New York City and featuring, Arthur, a "brain in a bottle" (Platinum 404), one of what are more formally called "prosthetics," which, at least for military purposes, replaced computers for command and control (389). Arthur goes on to command and control the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth. He — Arthur is gendered male (as is the story) — can be set up to communicate via electric/electronic typewriter, in which he is something like Don Marquis's Archy the cockroach[[1]], except Arthur types all CAPS (Archy was limited to lower-case). See "brain" in Keyword Index of Clockworks [1] for the group of stories of which "KoA" is a notable example (or use command "Search Clockworks2" on this Wiki); cf. and contrast Alcasan the preserved-head "Pragmatometer" in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (1945), and Helva the "encapsulated brain" in Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang stories (1961 f.).

3. FICTION, RDE, 15/X/12; RDE, Title, 14Aug19