io9
Sometime soon — maybe in our lifetimes — we humans will finally exceed our design limitations. We'll interface with artificial intelligences, extend our lifespans, and gain the ability to modify our bodies far beyond our current understanding of prosthetics. And when that happens, our capacity to make total idiots out of ourselves will be increased a thousand-fold. But sadly, there's never really been a posthuman Bertie Wooster. Here are a few pointers on how to write the transhuman fool's progress.
Just think about the era Bertie Wooster comes from for a sec: the automobile, the telegram and the telephone are both incredibly new, and they massively boost his ability to travel and communicate across vast distances. The first Wooster and Jeeves collection, The Man With Two Left Feet, came out in 1917. He's an early adopter, and the car and the phone (and later the airplane) play a huge role in setting up his imbroglios with his various aunts and suitors.
But all this technology doesn't make Bertie wiser or cleverer — the ability to talk to anyone, access any piece of information, travel anywhere — it just enables him to make more of an idiot of himself than ever. More gaffes, more misunderstandings. Wooster's propensity for tooling around the countryside in his newfangled car gets him into lots of scrapes. And then there are the cryptic telegrams and cables that launch many of his storylines. Like this one, from "Jeeves And The Impending Doom":
"A telegram, sir," said Jeeves, reentering the presence.
"Open it, Jeeves, and read contents. Who is it from?"
"It is unsigned, sir."
"You mean there's no name at the end of it?"
"That is precisely what I was endeavoring to convey, sir."
"Let's have a look."
I scanned the thing. It was a rummy communication. Rummy. No other word.
As follows:
REMEMBER WHEN YOU COME HERE ABSOLUTELY VITAL MEET PERFECT STRANGERS.
We Woosters are not very strong in the head, particularly at breakfast time, and I was conscious of a dull ache between the eyebrows.
So what makes us think our posthuman descendants (or us, if we're lucky) will be any luckier? According to the internet's own disinformation campaign, "posthuman" refers to people who have extended their capabilities so far, that they no longer meet the strict definition of humanity. Enhancements could include neural connections to the cyberverse, artificial intelligence grafted onto our own, cyborg limbs, nanotechnology, mind-enhancing drugs or biotech, and unlimited rice pudding.
But extending our capabilities also means expanding our ability to make jackasses out of ourselves. It will be a jolly nuisance once we start receiving encrypted instant messages directly into our brains. We'll be stuck, in the middle of backing up our consciousnesses, trying to figure out exactly who tunneled that animated video directly into our visual cortex. And how to deal with that attractive but misguided young person who may have mistaken the grace and liveliness of those who have transcended ortho-bodies for flirtation.
The fabric of society will rend and fray, like our old blue jeans the first time we try to fit our new cyborg legs into them.
Our most private internal monologues will accidentally go out on an insecure channel for our brother-in-law to pick up. Our canniest plans to escape from social gatherings, or help our less-suave friends find romance, will dash to pieces because we were wearing the wrong pelvis, and sent diametrically the wrong signal. Or you'll forget to tie up your spare exo-body, and it'll stagger in circles around your favorite local bar, convincing everybody that you've finally succumbed to utter dissoluteness.
And yes, maybe our implanted artificial intelligences and neural networks will be wise and all-knowing. But that could just make them the Jeeves to our Woosters. I picture the A.I. in your head trying to advise you of the correct spoon to use at dinner, or help you navigate a tricky nest of social relationships. You'll get more and more dependent on the sagacious A.I. in your head, and thus more and more helpless if your neural link ever goes down. And whenever you disregard your A.I.'s advice because you know best, total disaster will result.
Not to mention, posthumans will have bizarre fads that make Wodehouse's weird affectations seem like nothing. There will be cyber-pants. You will sport hats emblazoned with the rudest thing your subconscious is thinking at any given moment. You will try backing up your consciousness and restoring it in a sentient aquarium, with some disastrous consequences due to incompatible hardware. It will seem like a terribly amusing idea to play tennis using your own head as the ball — until it suddenly isn't.
And then there are the aunts and suitors. If you think Bertie had a hard time getting away from his relatives and would-be relatives in the Woodhouse stories, just imagine how hard it'll be when everybody can ping him all the time. Our bally relatives will always know exactly how to get a hold of us, and our every move will be trackable by someone who knows how to track the IP addresses your brain piggy-backs onto. Your alibis will be futile!
So I'm hoping someone will take up the challenge and write the Wodehouse/Varley mashups we deserve. Give us the incredibly advanced, yet clueless demigods who may, if we're lucky, replace us on this planet eventually. And make sure there are lots of cocktails involved!
Comments
Try the Ilium/Olympus books by Dan Simmons. It features two sets of post-humans, both post-literate. Both sets are equally stupid and arrogant and pathetic in their own ways, accustomed to life with no restrictions or real dangers and too much power.
OK doesn't describe what you're looking for, but good books nonetheless.
Goodness Robo-Jeeves!" I exclaimed, having a most uncomfortable sensation in an indelicate area "My gentetic deposit tube has become wedged into Bassingly-Gore's collector!" With aplomb, Jeeves wheeled his treads over and with a #2 manipulator freed us from this uncomfortable situation.
Ah Space-Butlers.
I see it as neo-Edwardian style fiends, like the Neo-Victoerians in Diamond Age, gallivanting about the planet like silly gods, destroying cultures and laughing all the while, getting plastered on genetically modified alcohol that would kill mere mortals. Sort of like the Greek myths, only more perverse and less serious.
The Dancers At The End of Time, basically.
I only took one thing away from this article:
"unlimited rice pudding"
Yum!
@Theoban: I've found that in several post-human books, the ennui of too much ability, too much power, too much eternity, gets to be kinda boring. Okay, we get it, being a god can be a drag.
You left out one possible]/probable screwup: if your consciousness can be backed up & you have a spare body... Who ever said you can't meet yourself? What if your first backup conscious gets "accidentally" restored? And then decides it doesn't like "what you've done with/to yourself?" Self-hatred and self-loathing could become startlingly manifest.
But really, a nice short story by Stanislaw Lem is apropo: a race car driver fell behind in his payments for his various prostheses, including half his brain. Of course, it goes to trial. More than that escapes me. But that also suggests some comic elements. These upgrades to wetware will not be free. What if they need to be repossessed for lack of payment? Could knowledge be repossessed? That would be one way to get the money back for unpaid student loans.
I read the story many years ago in German. The title, I believe, is something like "Wer bist du, Mr. Smith?" or maybe "Was bist du, Mr. Smith?" "Who are you, Mr. Smith?" or "What are you, Mr. Smith?"
There are comic elements to this whole post-human business that appear to have gone largely unexplored.
i'm immeadiately visualizing Fear & Loathing on the Moons of Jupiter.
Great article!
On a serious note, Axiomatic by Greg Egan(sp?) has a series of excellent short stories about conciousness being downloaded into jewel like computers implanted in one's brain which will survive long after death. The creepy bit is that when the twinning is complete, the brain is killed and the 'gem' takes over...
Someone who likes (or at least refers to) both Wodehouse and rice pudding can't be all bad.
Have I been broadcasting my subconscious wishes again?
"Trunk and Disorderly" by Charles Stross is pretty much explicitly about a posthuman Bertie Wooster.
There's an excerpt at
[www.asimovs.com]
Charlie Stross' "Trunk and Disorderly" fits the bill admirably - as does his upcoming "Saturns's Children".
Charles Stross did this with his short story Trunk and Disorderly. Subterranean Press has recently released it as an audio download.
@bob-kowalski:
Eric Nylund uses the idea of making copies of one's self. And, the Trek Transporter should be able to do that without trouble. So, if you wanted an amry of Lt. Data's, you should have been able to get them. Just another Trek failure of logic. Wil McCarthy also has a Fax machine, as does Charles Stross, all of which can be used to copy you--the twin brother or sister you always wanted.
Would that Plum Woodhouse were alive to do the update. No current writer has his style and grace with the English language. Asimov came close in his more playful stories, but alas, he is no more.
BTW-- Jeves was a valet or a gentleman's gentleman.
Never a Butler!
@bob-kowalski:
Certainly at antipodes from Wodehouse's lighter-than-air touch, is VanVogt's Null-A series.
The concluding sentence of the first book where the protagonist finds body of the other "player" who awakened him in the body he has, goes
"The face was his own".
i am helpless with peals of laughter in the face of a biomechanical hugh laurie.
i adore this concept. it's part of what makes futurama so delicious to me: we're 1000 years into the future...and still nothing works.
@Thorfin: I stand corrected sir. Thank ye.
Damn! Beaten to the punch on Charlie Stross' effort Trunk and Disorderly! Although, it will be hard for anyone to match the bust-yer-gut, cosmic laughter inducing writing of Wodehouse.
@karlsackett: Darn, I thought I remembered something along those lines, but I googled for it last night and couldn't find it... my memory has finally gone kaput, I guess.
I feel certain that Iain M. Banks might be on the road to covering this at some point. The Culture is rife for one of these kinds of episodes somewhere, where an aristocratic human in the lap of luxury is ruled utterly by a Mind who serves as a gentleman's gentleman.
I harbor a suspicion that at some point, someone made the Bertie Wooster connection with Booster Gold. I mean, Wooster and Jeeves vs Booster and Skeets? At one point, Skeets has been called a valet bot as opposed to a guard drone or whatever he was originally. Although, Booster mostly gets his stuff done with powered armor rather than post-human tech.
But, I think, if one were to be true to the spirit of the Jeeves stories, the Jeeves character would discourage most of the post-human nonsense. In the same way that Jeeves disapproved of Berties purple socks, spats in Eton colors or soft silk shirts for dinner attire, the Jeeves of the post-human world would likely frown on most of the "improvements" available.
"You know, there was something rummy in Jeeves-bots tone. He was skulking, no doubt, about my new eyes. But, dash it, the robot was altogether too conservative at times. When it comes to which genetic modifications to take to my Aunt Agatha's or what discreet cybernetic devices could be used for optimum connectivity, the robot was a genius. Still, when it came to something as fruity as a new pair of eyes with so many new spectrums and data to be accessed, the rummy machine had all the sensibilities of a cave man from the late twentieth century."
Ian Banks had Ferbin & Holse, a Wooster & Jeeves-like pairing, In Matter, his recent Culture novel, but made them retro-human, more or less, rather than post-human.
In Tad Williams end-cap story to his Otherland books (which can be found in one of the Legends compilations. Number 2 I believe) He actually has a post-human Jeeves as a character. The Jeeves is an AI construct in an artificial reality simulation of the Wooster & Jeeves universe. There's an interesting political twist added too.
I'm not entirely certain Bertrum Wilberforce wasn't posthuman, and Jeeves his hyperintelligent alien valet. Not for nothing were Bertie and his friends refered to as "the Drones."
@Rus: Certainly some of the names of Wodehouse characters seem fantastic, alien or futuristic. What price Galahad Threepwood? Gussie Fink-Nottle? Might not The Efficient Baxter have been a skin job? Was The Empress of Blandings as innocent as she seemed?
@Rus: Let's also remember what Aunt Agatha said of Bertie, "It is young men like you who make a person with the future of the race at heart despair...You are simply an anti-social animal, a drone." Snarky comment about a younger generation? Or a hint of the secret of Bertie's inhuman nature?
@bob-kowalski: I haven't read very much Lem, but his work seems to fit the right sort of style to do a posthuman Bertie Wooster.
Great post, thanks Charlie! I'm a huge Wodehouse fan. Can't believe I've never heard of "Trunk and Disorderly"--must find NOW.
I always suspected Jeeves was a AI of Culture sophistication. He could formulate the most convoluted scheme in a femtosecond and carry it out with perfect aplomb so that the separated lovers can wed, an inheritance is restored, and Bertie is forced to realize he can never again wear that tie with the pink polka-dots.
Plus, he could Quantum Teleport at will:
"Blast it all, Jeeves! Where the deuce are you?"
"Right behind you, sir."
"Ah, yes. Well jolly good then! Let's pop off to the Club, what ho?"
Jeeves of the Ganymede Club--on Ganymede!
@Mathmos:
>>>SPOILER AHEAD<<<
Ah, but what happened to Holse by the epilogue? If a SC agent ain't post-human I don't know what is!
@Grey_Area: True, but just to quibble Holse was clearly the Jeeves figure, and Charlie Jane asked for a post-human Bertie. As you pointed out, the original Jeeves already seemed post-human.
That's quite correct, but I'm no writer. Just a heckler in the peanut gallery.
I do earnestly hope someone does Steal This Pitch (Gyrus, Miranda? y'all did a great job with the last challenge) as I will be the first in line grubby fists filled with lucre ready to buy multiple copies.
@Jeff-Minor:
You're right, it's a well trodden path, too much power = boredom = lets laze around and/or destroy things!
But I found Ilium etc. interesting because 1 set of Post-Humans were unaware of being Post-Humans, and the other set had buggered off to create a wormhole to another universe to become the Gods from the Iliad.
Now THAT's boredom.
@Theoban: Just butting in here.
I felt the Moravecs (robots) had far more personality and character than any of the post-humans especially those obnoxious godlike wankers. It could be argued that they were the true and most deserving inheritors of all the good bits of humanity.
I, for one, am concerned about the prospect of having the whole of the cyberverse streaming through my consciousness; I mean, what if I have dial-up? The costs would be tremendous!
@Grey_Area:
Oh I don't doubt you're right - Moravecs were the heart and soul of the series (except maybe for Daeman - he's wonderful in the first book) - the rest of them do come off as spoiled children, and the only ones willing to put some damn work into existence.
Oh now we're coming full circle. Daeman--now there's a post-human Bertie for you. Maybe I missed your reference above concerning him. That doughy butterfly-hunting horndog (and Nabakov knockoff) fits the bill perfectly! He does mature and develop by the end but that's because Illium/Olympos was Serious SF and not a lovealbe farce, for the most part.
I couldn't Daeman's name, which I realize is stoopid because I'm sitting in front of a primitive instant memory retrevial device. Jes' not gettin' teh hang of this new-fangled world.
Post-human Singularity? You kids go on ahead--maybe come visit me at the old-style human zoo. Bring pork rinds.
BTW, anyone remember Poul Anderson's James Bond-like Dominic Flandry? He had a green alien valet named Chives.
OK, I'm stepping to the plate on this one. Indeed, I'm actually working on a story called "Die Verwandlungen Versionen 2.0" which is Kafka's The Transformation retold as a Singularity-related tale in which Greg Samsa, a dumbass "eternal college student" who still lives with his parents wakes up one morning to discover that he's been turned into a giant robot bug and all of Pittsburgh outside his house is mutating as nanoplagues and grey goo flies everywhere and people are turning posthuman left and right and...it's just craziness! Craziness, I tell you!
Most fun I've ever had writing a piece of fiction. :)
@Mathmos: Chives.. That was good, but not Jeeves. Of course Flandry was no Wooster, thank god..
I nominate Reteif for the Jeeves award, he sure had to cope with upperclass idiots.
And i must make sure that my butler to post humans is not named Chives..No, Thebes, i'm safe.. Now if ( somebody nameless) would get off the dime, i could amaze you all.
@femto: Actually, Lem's Cyberiada: Fables for a Cybernetic Age has the right mix of frivolity, wanton intelligence(s), and whimsy.
Simulating the universe in order to fashion a cybernetic poet? Accidentally creating the stupidest thinking machine ever? A machine that can make anything beginning with the letter "n" including Nothing -- not to be confused with "nothing"? The Dragons of Improbablity?
It was the first book of his that I read. And in case your wondering, these stories are just as playful in Polish as they are in English translation.
@Thorfin: I may know valets, but I misspelled Wodehouse.
Drat these cyber fingers.
Since Jeeves is Bertie's antithesis, I would imagine him as remaining human to contrast Bertie's posthumanity. To me, the Jeeves and Wooster books are all about class - how the upper class is completely dependent on its servant class, the idle lives of rich twentysomething bachelors, the total subversion of the master-servant relationship, etc.... - so in a futuristic world where posthumans are dominant in society, I would think regular humans would be second-class citizens. Thus, Jeeves would remain a human. With vast knowledge and understanding of biotechnology.
The premise that you're proposing (oddly) reminds me of the Transients in Warren Ellis' TRANSMETROPOLITAN. They changed their DNA as part of a trend and were stuck somewhere in between human and alien. A good example of people doing stupid things with technology.
@Lizfu: Why not Bertie an idle transhuman, Jeeves a still-more-capable full AI programmed to serve?
By the way somehow this discussion makes me think of Cordwainer Smith's phrase, The Rediscovery of Mankind.
Fantastic post/comment conversation!
Got some good reading ideas.
It kind of reminds me of the Spitzer/Dupre thing-- the guy got got by the tech help put into place.
@Lizfu: Ooh, that's very interesting. Especially since the automatic thing most people think about when they think of "Hired Help Of the Future" is robot companions! Yet the humans currently working as servants or otherwise non-idle semi-aristocrats are hardly mindless automatons made to serve. If robot, the Jeeveses of the future should have a life outside the master. That just makes for better stories. But to have Jeeves be human is better- the future Bertie the narrator and point of entry, but the character most similar to the reader is Jeeves. I'm babbling, but anyway the point is that's a very cool idea.
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