A Logic Named Joe

Plot

The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get".

In the story, a logic (whom Ducky later calls Joe) develops some degree of sapience and ambition. Joe proceeds to switch around a few relays in "the tank" (one of a distributed set of central information repositories), and cross-correlate all information ever assembled – yielding highly unexpected results. It then proceeds to freely disseminate all of those results to everyone on demand (and simultaneously disabling all of the content-filtering protocols). Logics begin offering up unexpected assistance to everyone which includes designing custom chemicals that alleviate inebriation, giving sex advice to small children, and plotting the perfect murder.

Eventually Ducky "saves civilization" by locating and turning off the only logic capable of doing this.

Reception

In 1982, Isaac Asimov lauded the story as "prophetic" and "one of [Leinster's] finest", and observed that it "actually get(s) things right", if one "change(s) 'logics' to 'home computers' and make(s) a few other inconsequential semantic changes".Introduction to A Logic Named Joe, collected in * 'The Great Science Fiction Stories*, Volume 8, 1946; Edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg; published November 1982 by DAW Books;

In 2007, Dave Truesdale praised it as "absolutely incredible" and "one of the greatest predictive, prophetic short SF stories in history, bar none", noting "how righteously dead on Leinster is in his depiction of the home personal computer and the internet in 1946!"

In 2012, Steven H Silver, reviewing the 2005 Leinster collection A Logic Named Joe, stated that "(i)f it hadn't predicted the rise of the internet, 'A Logic Named Joe' would be seen as a dated story rather than as an important work", but emphasized that it is "still an enjoyable story".

Publication history

"A Logic Named Joe" has appeared in the collections Sidewise in Time (Shasta, 1950), The Best of Murray Leinster (Del Rey, 1978), First Contacts (NESFA, 1998), and A Logic Named Joe (Baen, 2005), and was also included in the Machines That Think compilation, with notes by Isaac Asimov, published 1984 Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

References

References

1. [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/murray-leinster/first-contacts/ FIRST CONTACTS: THE ESSENTIAL MURRAY LEINSTER], reviewed in ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]''; published September 15, 1998; archived online May 15, 2010; retrieved November 20, 2024
2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070416135849/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/dt0705.htm Off On A Tangent: F&SF Style - The Oddball, the Whacky, and the Prophetic in Short SF]; from ''[[The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction]]'', May 2007; archived at the [[SF Site]]; retrieved November 20, 2024
3. [https://www.stevenhsilver.com/logic.html A LOGIC NAMED JOE by Murray Leinster], reviewed by [[Steven H Silver]]; published January 2012; retrieved November 20, 2024