review of
John Sladek's Roderick
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17, 2016

For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/444201-rob-or-rick

I've only previously read Sladek's Mechasm (see my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/419915-dna-s-mol-hath-jokes ). The cover has an image of a stereotypical bully boy punching a small robot in its face while another boy looks on from inside a trashcan. I bought this partially b/c I thought the cover was funny.

The beginning of my review of Mechasm states: "This bk was.. odd.. or maybe it was just the mood I was in when I read it.. It's a sortof Dr. Strangelove style parody.." Perhaps Roderick is a coming-of-age-&-losing-innocence story. More or less every character is presented cynically w/ exaggerated flaws, they're caricatures. Still, b/c of the flaws they're 'human':

"At the University Health Service a yawning intern used a tongue depressor to mark his place in The Heart of the Matter ("somewhere far away he thought he heard the sounds of pain.") and decided to order more flu vaccine—a wind like that. He scooted in his swivel chair to the console of the inventory computer and began playing its keys. In no time at all he was able to order three trillion—oops, thousand, 3,000 doxes—dose, damnit, doses!" - p 12

Given that this was published in 1980, the humor of typos might've been a little abstruse at the time - but to people who regularly use cell-phone keyboards that're too small for their fingers this is a common scenario.

Sladek's presentation of the NASA man is a bit.. odd.. certainly irregular insofar as he's presented as a fairly ignorant 'cracker':

"["]What NASA really wants from you—are you ready?—is a real robot."

""A what?"

""A real, complete, functioning artificial man. It don't matter what he looks like, a course. I mean a space robot don't have to win no beauty contests. But he's gotta have a real human brain, you with me so far?"" - p 15

As it turns out, this NASA man ain't quite what he's presenting himself to be.. - but that's a spoiler. At any rate, Roderick's 'birth' is off to a bad start. Roderick's designers are building learning abilities into him. Why is a raven like a writing desk?

""'There a like because they both sound like they begin with R. There a like they both have some syllables more than one. There a like because one is like a bird and theres a bird called a secretary and the other is like a furniture and theres a furniture called a secretary too. Or may be they both have quills which are like old pens. May be E. A. Poe wrote one when he sat at the other or is that a like? There both inky. I give up. I give up. There a like because otherwise you wouldnot ask me why. Or there a like because there both in the same riddle—'"" - p 17

"It first appeared in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a famously creepy children's book which Lewis Carroll wrote in 1865. Alice falls asleep one day, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole, and ends up in a world of crazy logic which Carroll based on what he considered the nonsensical logic that was piling up in his chosen field of mathematics. Arguably the craziest characters are the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Alice ends up at a tea party with them, and the Mad Hatter asks her the now-famous question, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

[..]

"The unanswered riddle, which many people were exposed to in their formative years, got under people's skin. In their attempt to adequately extricate it, they've come up with answers. A satisfying, but meta, answer is, "Poe wrote on both," given by puzzle enthusiast Sam Lloyd. More in the spirit of the nonsense genre, Aldous Huxley ventured, "Because there is a 'b' in both and an 'n' in neither." Beautifully bizarre." - Esther Inglis-Arkell - http://io9.gizmodo.com/5872014/the-answer-to-the-most-famous-unanswerable-fantas...

Roderick undergoes other similar pop culture challenges:

""Okay, the face. Whatever it is, I call it a face. White and black, mostly white. Hole-eyes. A black nose. the nose looks like a black Ping-Pong ball, does that make sense? Come to think of it, the ears—if they're ears—on top look like two Ping-Pong paddles, also black. O call them Ping and Pong, and one day they were walking through the deep dark forest and . . ."" - p 29

NASA has been seriously debased in Sladek's future world:

"["]Look, there's a picture of Luke Draeger, remember him!" None of them did. "I seen him walk on the Moon, boys, I helped put him there. Or was it Mars? Anyways, NASA still means something to some of us. It means—it means—billowing exhaust clouds catching the first light of dawn, a silver needle rising, reaching for the fucking stars! The puny crittur we call Man setting out to conquer the stars, to rendezvous with his Eternal Destiny! Call me a dreamer, boys, but I see Man leaping out from this little planet of ours, to the Moon, to the planets, to our neighboring stars and finally beyond—into the cock-sucking Unknown!"" - p 21

Literally NONE of the characters in Roderick are presented as 100% positive protagonists. Whether they're professors or students they're all riddled w/ foibles. Dr. Fred is a spin on an old school racist:

"But the bell prevented further development of this, Dr. Fred's favorite theory: that Northernness was a necessary precondition of civilization. The cause, he felt, was magnetism: just being closer to the North Pole seemed somehow to elevate the human brain waves to produce higher thoughts. Without this magnetic boost, man remained primitive and uncreative. Thus the Southern hemisphere produced crude mud huts instead of cathedrals; witch doctors instead of penicillin; cannibals instead of vegetarians; boomerangs instead of ICBMs—though perhaps he would not develop his theory quite that far." - p 32

Rogers is another one, a typical two-faced manipulator:

""Fong more or less admits NASA pulled out because of some swindle. Swindle, that's right. He says it's internal to NASA, but you and I know how these things go. You can always get somebody to admit as much of the truth as won't hurt him at the moment, right? . . . So I don't know about you, I don't feel much like risking it. Not that I'd accuse Fong of anything, nice guy really, but a little legitimate caution might not be a bad . . . right. Right, see you."

"He pushed a button, checked off a name on the list, and pushed another button. "Dr. Tarr, you still there? I've just had Asperson on the other line, sounding him out, him and a few others on the committee, and we think—frankly, we agree something smells about this robot project." - p 37

But Rogers's sleaze gets countered:

"Dr. Jane Hannah's face was impassive, the face of a Cheyenne brave—which, during her early years in anthropology, she had been. "Facts, you say. I keep hearing opinions."

""Okay, sure, if you want my opinion, we should turn them down. With all these fraud rumors, I don't see how Fong's people can expect special treatment."

"She raised her martini, mumbled something over it, and took a sip. "Why not special treatment? Maybe what they have to give us is more precious than anything they could possibly have stolen. After all, true heroes can always break the rules. Think of Prometheus, stealing from the gods."" - p 56

"It was Aquinas, the Swine of Sicily, waddling on a Paris street, who was accosted by a stranger made entirely of wood, metal, glass, wax and leather—the automaton brought into being (through thirty years' work) by Albertus Magnus. Instantly Aquinas raised his staff and brought about the possibility of another thirty years' work . . ." - p 40

I find no mention of this incident or of the nickname "the Swine of Sicily" in the Wikipedia page for 'Saint' (I refuse to accept any Christinane as a 'Saint') Thomas of Aquinas but I do find a connection to Albertus Magnus:

"In 1245 Thomas was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, where he most likely met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV's offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. Because Thomas was quiet and didn't speak much, some of his fellow students thought he was slow. But Albertus prophetically exclaimed: "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

Then again I don't find any mention of Magnus building automatons in his Wikipedia entry either. In both entries the emphasis is partially on these men being "Saint"s in the Catholic Church's pantheon. Wd it be 'anti-thetical' for a 'Saint' to 'rival God' by building an artificial man? Contrary to this theory, there's a website of the "Jacques Maritain Center" that claims that the Catholic Church is not against science & that recounts this story about Magnus & Aquinas:

"Another legend relates to an automaton that he labored thirty year to produce, which he succeeded in making to speak. St. Thomas, the legend says, came unawares upon it in the workshop of Albert, and was so startled that he seized a stick, and shrieking Salve! Salve! smashed the fearful monster to pieces, thinking it to be some cruel savage who was about to attempt his life. The truth is this: Albert could manufacture automata, which were made to move by means of mercury, after the manner of Chinese mannikins and tumbling-toys; and it is possible that he may have constructed small mechanical figures capable of emitting sounds, for he speaks of these inventions as things then known. "The Barbiton," he says, "is a figure with a long beard, from the mouth of which comes a tube, with a bellows attached to one side. It is set in motion by the introduction of air into the tube, so that the bearded mannikin appears to play the flute." Albert probably manufactured an automaton of this kind, capable of moving and uttering the word Salve, so that the legend about St. Thomas's vigorous application of the stick is founded upon a historical fact." - http://www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/staamp3.htm

Giordano Bruno & Copernicus, among others, wd've probably been surprised to learn that the Catholic Church isn't against science. Ah! The great rehistorification!

"Aikin controlled his stutter remarkably well today, as he outlined his plan for crime prevention by use of the pendulum. He was becoming quite an authority on this psychic instrument, Tarr noticed. Too bad he still had such a hell of a time with that key word.

"Aikin unfolded a map. "See, here I've been and located the three places where this 'Ripper,' this murderer left his victims. The vibrations are very strong, even on a map. Using the p-p-p----swinging thing—I was able to locate them precisely."" - p 53

That interests me for 2 main reasons:

1. I'm a sucker for excuses for introducing unusual speech patterns into narration - such as w/ Jonathan Lethem's use of Tourette's Syndrome in Motherless Brooklyn (2000) & possibly elsewhere: "Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways." - http://www.amazon.com/Motherless-Brooklyn-Jonathan-Lethem/dp/0375724834

2. According to wikipedia: "A strict materialist, Sladek subjected the occult and pseudoscience to merciless scrutiny in The New Apocrypha. The book critically examined the claims of dowsing, homeopathy, parapsychology, perpetual motion and Ufology." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Sladek#Skepticism

Sladek parodies everything he writes about, including the academic process of applying for funding:

"Byron Dollsly grinned and slapped his heavy hand on the table. "Scope! Hah! Think you'll find plenty of scope in my idea, George. See how this grabs you. As you know, I've been working on lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller and others, namely a kind of engineering approach to consciousness. Well!"

"He beamed at Tarr and Aikin in turn, while they sat awaiting further enlightenment. "Well, I've only had a major breakthrough, that's all. As I see it, we have to begin with first principles. Biology!"

"After a moment, Tarr took his pipe from his mouth. "Is that it? Biology?"

""Is that it, he asks. Hah! Okay, let me spell it out for you. The divine Teilhard saw life as a radial force, and consciousness as a tangential force. Life, see, is like a gear-wheel growing larger, while consciousness is the gear actually turning—meshing!"" - p 54

In Sladek's world anything can go wrong for the stupidest reasons. EG: an assassin who goes to the wrong bar for a meet w/ his fellow killers & who gets into a conversation w/ the wrong person who has no idea what he's talking about but puts their own spin on it anyway:

"["]Fact is, I get a lot of satisfaction out of workin' alone, you know? Boy when you see their faces—when they realize what's comin' off—" He chuckled. "Makes it all worthwhile."

""I'll bet. But do you usually see their faces? I thought—"

""Even when you don't, you still know what they're thinkin'. Boy Howdy! It's like real communication! I mean in everyday life you just never get that close to nobody. real communication."

""I know just what you mean," she said. Nice to meet someone who liked his work, even if he did carry the off-stage villainy thing too far." - p 62

Everyone is limited by their own fantasy worlds. The police chief is writing a cop novel:

"Dobbin wrote slowly and carefully, his tongue protruding at the corner of his mouth:

""Don't touch me," she said. "Don't ever touch me again. Why was I ever dumb enough to marry a cop?"

"Suddenly I felt big and awkward and very, very tired. "Look, I know it's our anniversary, but this Delmore diamond case is ready to crack wide open—"

""And then there'll be some other case," she said, her mouth set hard. "Maybe when you give all you've got to your work, there's just nothing left for me."

""She was near the window when it happened. Suddenly the glass blossomed into a spider-web pattern, with a hole in the middle the size of a .303 slug. There was a matching hole in Laura's lovely throat. Even before she hit the floor, she was very, very—" - pp 69-70

&, of course, Sladek likes to throw in surprises, things that don't match the stereotypes he's created for his characters. Take, eg, the reading material of the visiting tyrant Shah:

""The pianola," continued the Shah. "An excellent symbol for the automaton, yes? It is I believe also used by Mr. W, Gaddis in his novelle J.R. where he speaks of Oscar Wilde traveling in America, marveling at the industry, the young industry you understand. Now I do believe Mt. Wilde suggested shooting all the piano players and using the pianola instead, or do I have that erroneously?"" - p 72

Roderick ends up in the neglect (as opposed to care) of a back-to-nature couple of sorts whose eco-cynicism marks them as being as venal as most of the other characters:

"Of course he still cared about the global environment, in a way. He still wrote articles about the blue whale and the white rhino. Not his fault if they turned into promotional tie-ins for glossy magazine spreads selling dog food and deodorants. He had to live. Had to swim with the current and survive. People got tired worrying about Spaceship Earth, they wanted to concentrate on Spaceship Me." - p 102

Fortunately for Roderick he moves on to "Ma" & "Pa":

""That's the third time I've called you to dinner," said Ma, coming into the workshop. "What are you inventing out here?"

"He started. "Oh, uh, well I'm not sure what it is until it's finished. Might turn out to be a puzzle that nobody can take apart." He turned the gadget over, frowning down at it. "Or it might be the start of something really big—a tap-dancing show that knows all the steps—or even a car that runs on scrap metal."" - p 115

Just those last 2 ideas alone cd be expanded into a novel's worth of material. Ma & Pa are the people who wd function the least smoothly in relation to the 'real' world. As such, they're Sladek's most sympathetic characters:

""Come on, you enjoyed every minute of it, you even made up that little card for me, remember? On one side it said, 'I am a communist,' and on the other, 'Communists always think they're cards.' "

"She sniffed. "I had to join the Ladies' Guild to smooth that over."

""Yes, I seem to remember your getting them all around here for a seance, wasn't it? Getting in touch with a flying saucer, don't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Working away on the old ouija board and all the time—"

""Just a few lines of Tristan Tzara, to perk them up," she said. "For their own good, really." She sat back on her chair until the noonday sun caught her white hair and gleamed on the green scalp beneath." - p 117

I wish I'd thought of that one myself.

Sladek's not exactly one for happy endings.. but I reckon I'll have to read the rest of the Roderick trilogy to find out, eh?!:

"A gold tooth grinned back at Roderick, wrinkles smiled, a watery tooth winked, and a tattooed hand patted his dome. The children smiled in their sleep, the woman with ear-rings blew him a kiss, and even the baby seemed to wave its foot in congratulations. Roderick was a gypsy hero, and now there was no question of sending him to the junk-yard.

"Instead, later that night, they sold him into slavery." - p 138

Sladek parodies J. Edgar Hoover's famous denial of the existence of organized crime, reputedly because he got racing types from the mob:

""These people you knew that was into call girls, who, was it the Mafia?"

""There's no such thing as the Mafia,"" - p 140

Sladek even seems to get his digs in at the art world, Andy Warhol in particular:

"Mr. Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. "Me, I don't understand nothing. It's the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don't get sore, hey I don't mean this is garbage, I mean real garbage, it's my business."" - p 184

When I was reading this I thought it was a reference to Ethel Scull, the 1st person to commission a portrait from Warhol in 1963. I misremembered her husband as being a garbage tycoon. However, I read online that he was a taxi tycoon instead. It still seems likely that this section is a Warhol parody, tho, b/c of the following:

""Did you cover that boring exhibition of wrecked cars last May?"

""Not me, you mean the freeway thing, when all those cars and trucks piled up? I wanted to go, really, thought it sounded enterprising at least, getting out there and casting the whole mess in fiberglass right on the spot, I mean whatsisname, Jough Braun must have been actually cruising the city with a ton of epoxy—imagine getting an actual body in there!"

For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/444201-rob-or-rick ( )

A comedy satire about a young robot. Fairly good but pretty unfocused, scattershot would be a good word to describe it. ( )

Roderick is a very good book with plenty interesting things to say. It’s much more a novel of ideas than a compelling story, and I can see why it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked it quite a bit.

Our protagonist is Roderick, the first true AI robot, who is developed in a fraudulently funded university program, and then abandoned to a series of strangers. He begins life as something that thinks like a child and looks like a toy, but gradually learns and matures through each of his experiences, and is eventually given a roughly humaniform body.

I hadn’t read much Sladek before, and certainly I had no idea that he was so funny. There are moments in this book that verge on pure slapstick (as in the almost perfect third chapter) but more often the humor is an unrelenting satire that that takes aim at humanity’s shortcomings in setting after setting: from academia to public and parochial schools to politics to business to art to government to law enforcement to science fiction classics to you name it. This gives the book an obvious echo of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Indeed there are times when the non-stop grumbling about humanity threatens to derail whatever forward momentum the storyline can offer.

Despite the humor, there is pervasive underlying sadness about the book. Roderick is an innocent who never gets what he needs, but is instead constantly falling victim to the failings of his human companions.

On some level, there is not effort to make the book realistic. In Sladek’s world, people insist on seeing Roderick as a person, visual evidence to the contrary. Indeed this is a world where people always see what they want to see. When Roderick paints his face black as a symbol of mourning for his deceased Pa; he is suddenly subject to appalling racism.

Roderick does lose momentum, and it meanders off into a few subplots that detract more than they add to the book. With some aggressive editing this book might have been one of the great masterpieces of science fiction. ( )