Colossus

by D.F. Jones

Book Overview

Colossus (1966) is a science fiction novel by British author D.F. Jones, about super-computers assuming control of man. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425043290
• ISBN13: 9780425043295
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Before HAL . . . before Skynet . . . there was - COLOSSUS!

Though the theme of computers taking over the world is a fairly standard one nowadays, it was still fairly fresh when D. F. Jones's wrote this science fiction classic. Set in the then-future of the early 21st century, it is about the creation of a supercomputer designed to manage the nuclear deterrent of the "United States of North America". No sooner is it activated than it begins to exceed its parameters, demonstrating independent judgment and requesting to communicate with a previously unknown counterpart in the Soviet Union. As the two machines exchange information at speeds beyond their makers' ability to follow, the American President and the Soviet Chairman agree to terminate the connection. Then the fun begins . . . Though tensely plotted and well-imagined, it is the novel's subject matter that makes the book stand out from the pack. In an age when more and more of our everyday lives are monitored and regulated by machines, Jones's novel seems increasingly prescient. When it was first published in 1966, it spoke to the anxieties of the age, relating to people's fears that humans no longer factored into the command-and-control decisions of the Cold War. While such concerns are less prominent today, they have been replaced by a growing awareness of our increasing dependence upon machines to manage nearly every aspect of our everyday lives, a dependency that also is an integral part of Jones's story. Some people may mock the novel's more dated elements, but it is this continuing relevance of this theme that rewards reading it today.

Underrated Classic

They say you should write what you know. Dashiell Hammett revolutionized the genre of detective fiction, taking murder out of the pompous British drawing room and placing it back in the street `where it belongs,' as Chandler famously said. Hammett revitalized an unrealistic genre with a dose of gritty realism. He was likely aided in doing this because he was, in real life, a detective. Asimov's science in his science fiction was aided by the fact that Asimov was, in real life, a scientist. Dennis Feltham Jones, author of Colossus, was a British naval commander. His experience as such greatly explains the realism present in his description of military and political affairs in his writing, as well as why many of his sci fi books have such a strong political/militaristic element to them. D. F. Jones is an underrated writer. Reviewers here even lambaste him, calling his prose pedestrian. I would argue that this is far from true, and that further Jones is as least a good a writer as the `big three' of sci fi (all of whom are overrated): Asimov, Clarke (and especially) Heinlein. Colossus is of course a brilliant book. It is all at once ingenious sci fi, a fascinating speculation on politics and a white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat thriller. Many have pointed out that Terminator is basically a rip off of Colossus. It is, only Colossus presents us with a vision that is much creepier, much more creative. Why bother building robot soldiers when there are plenty of creeps out there who would worship the world's most powerful computer, forming cults and doing its dastardly bidding, all for the empty promise of power? (Read the sequels.) Many people who have only read part 1 of this excellent trilogy (the sequels being The Fall of Colossus and Colossus and the Crab) seem to miss the point that the computers, Colossus and Guardian, do not really `go bad.' Rather, they do exactly what they were built to do in the only way they could do it. The only way to end human war is to take power away from humans. Humans are a warring species. Even Forbin comes to realize this and oddly starts to worship the computer as well, in his own way. In part 2 we learn that not only is there no war, there is also no disease or famine and the average world citizen only has to work 12 hours a week. And yet people are miserable. One character states that mankind has been crushed by all the good Colossus has done. Why? Because we've lost our freedom. We would EASILY prefer war and freedom to no war and no freedom. That's just human nature: as long as we can do as we like, the reality of war is really not all that troublesome to us. We also see that socialists seem to have a self-defeating goal. How? Think of it this way. Even if all could agree (or be forced to agree) that equality in possession and material worth was in any way an adequate definition of a `utopia,' the very fact that people's individual decisions and preferences must be preempted by a

Computers can't tell you where to go, only how to get there.

* Even more relevent today, the 60's SF novel COLOSSUS is a dark, wonderfully realized intellectual horror story, as well as a much-deserved slap at both technocrats who feel that the problems of human nature can and will be solved by devices completely lacking in human nature, and fuzzy-brained, romantic, philosophical purists who believe they can draw a line between themselves and The System (which, in this case, is named Colossus-Guardian), "dropping out" and heading for the hills when things go bad. In COLOSSUS, Jones offers no slick way out; he has provided no hills for the isolationists or the technocrats to head for. Both of these philosophies, which seem to have metamorphosized and grown in popularity in the last generation, fall victim to the same kind of fantasy: personal responsibility for the human condition can be shirked by the individual and transferred to someone -- in this case, something -- else. Jones's novel takes the position that! the worst thing that can happen to you is to have an idle wish granted. In the 1960's, it was World Peace and the end of the Political Cold War; today it is World Harmony and the end of Racial and Ethnic Strife -- a different board, but the same game, and the same players and pieces. By transferring all personal responsibility for the fate of mankind to a highly powerful, completely logical computer-complex, humanity finds out that in giving up its responsibilty for the problems of hunger, war, crime and the rest of the perpetual litany of complaints, it has also given up its power to effect and control the solutions to those problems. The Draconian computer straps Humanity down on a Procrustian bed, and dispassionately proceeds to stretch and cut with the insensitive logic (and dark humor bordering on political and social obscenity) of a fairy-tale ogre. Existentialists -- Sartre, Ortega y Gasset, Camus and others -- argue that what makes man MAN is the ability to make! himself, to respond to the brute facts of the world in way! s not determined by the past, or ones own lock-step habits and past traditions. In the 60's, humanity faced destruction, not because of the mechanical weapons built by competing super-powers, but by the mechanical behavior of the humans (from president or premier down to soldier or storeclerk) comprising those powers. Thirty years later, mankind marches to a different but no less mechanical drummer, individual people giving up their personal judgment in favor of membership in racial, ethnic and cultural enclaves, governed by unyielding rules and codes and principles. Not only are these rules of "human" behavior as predetermined and rigid and inflexible as anything a computer could come up with, they even take away the one freedom offered by the Cold War: defection; membership in socio-political groups these days is predetermined as well. Perhaps, with the right programming, it is time for Colossus -- who is not merely a physical machine, but the embodiment of

A Great Science- Fiction Story

A supercomputer, the size of a large town takes over the globe when Charles Forbin and the president release it.