(This Article is part of an unfinished series of thoughts about modern thinking about military development)
Behold the genius: Human minds in battles of the future
Science Fiction is a literary genre that deals with the question how we can remain human in the face of change. It examines the forces of nature and those we unleash upon ourselves, and how new developments in technology and sociology affect us as individuals as well as society. Science Fiction is, even in the most dystopian and crual worlds it creates, essential a progessive and liberal genre. Even the most vivid descriptions of torture only possibly through new technology, even the most terrifying narrative of a future totalitarian state contrasts is still told from a viewpoint that upholds individual freedom and dignity to be the most valuable forms of human existance.
In this, science fiction is quite the opposite of its often belittled evil twin, the fantasy genre, in which the possibility of a rational explanation of the universe has been suspended. Often enough, the turn towards the subconscious or the occult is accompanied with the related racism, sexism, or other rather sorry views on the universe. This dichotomy between science and fantasy has been eroded in past years, but still the underlying ideas in creating such worlds apply.
Its only logical, then, that in describing future conflicts, science fiction strives to place man and his capabilities into the center of the battle again. Otherwise there would be little use in describing battles: A combat between autonomous robots would have little interest save for its consequences for the humans effected by its outcome. So its computer-enhanced, but human brains that decide the battles of Revelation Space, it is a small – if genious – boy that decides the vast battles for dozend of systems in “Ender’s Game”, not to speak of all those previously discussed movies that essentially show “skill” in handling the machines being more important than any technological advantage.
In order to explain this prominence of human capabilities, writers resort to quite imaginative ideas – if they bother to explain the phenomenon at all. One way of course is to resort to the absence or inabilities of machine minds. In Frank Herbert’s “Dune”-universe, thinking machines have been banned outright. In “Fools Mate” a small but very instructive story by Robert Sheckley published March 1953 in “Astounding”, one side defeats the other by attacking in random and suicidal ways, thereby paralyzing the opponents computer, who keeps looking for the presumed strategy behind the attacks while his forces are defeated peacemeal.
In other novels, space combat essentially takes the character of old naval battles, with battleships and cruisers exchanging broadsides, such as the renowned “Defiant” from Niven and Pournelles “The Mote in God’s Eye”:
“No robot could cope with the complexity of decisions damage control could generate, and if there were such a robot it might easily be the first item destroyed in battle.” Granted, this was 1974, when computers were still the size of Asimov MULTIVAC, and far removed from todays networked gadgets, still the absurdness of the statement shows what is to me the underlying rationale: If you take humans out of the battle, battles become boring.
Unless, of course, the computers themselves are sentient and have feelings, in which case new and pretty exiting fights can be imagined, such as the marvellous dialogue between a sentient battleship and its commander at the climatic battle at the end of Ian M. Bank’s “Excession” The little chitchat ends with the battleship ejecting the captain into space as he refuses the ship’s suggestion to surrender.
We will get back to Banks and the culture later. I hope, though, that I was able to show that the tendency of science fiction to put humans at the pivotal points of battles is a result of the very questions science fictions asks: What will happen to us in the future, how will we cope? In the next installments of this series, I would like to compare this outlook on the future with a more professional approach, to whit: The military’s view itself about the future, and general tendencies in military development which can be identified even today.