Frederik Pohl, not just a man, an institution

Mr. Pohl started off with a reading from his book The Boy Who Would Live Forever. It’s the sequel to Gateway, a book I am sad to say I have not yet read and my library didn’t seem to have when I went today. It sounds wonderful. A very open ended idea that could go just about anywhere. The reading was funny and entertaining but nothing as funny and entertaining as Mr. Pohl himself. He opened the floor for questions directly following the reading.

One of the questions/answers had to do with artificial intelligence and the possibility of putting a human mind into a computer. Mr. Pohl talked about how every four years there is a big jump in computer capability and said that he expects in about 20 years computers will be as complex as a human brain and that at that point he would expect them to become self aware. If they can be that intricate and not know what they are he will be disappointed.

Then he talked about how a friend had said that the way to get a mind into a computer is to cut the corpus callosum, which is the divider between the two hemispheres of the brain, and fix up a device so a computer takes the place of the corpus callosum. This way every single thought you have will go into the computer and be recorded. After a few weeks you could turn off the organic brain and the uploaded brain would take its place.

This is fascinating to me but I have some problems with it. I don’t think you are really moving the mind into a computer. At best you are a making a Xerox copy of your mind. Just like a copy it is more of a snapshot than an actual representation of who you are.

What if you were just getting over a tragedy and you were in deep in a mourning period? Your thoughts and feelings would not be representative of your entire life or being. Plus can this inorganic brain grow and evolve as we do? Are we not very, very different people than we were ten years ago?

I would be extremely interested to see what would happen if you did a sort of experiment where you uploaded into the inorganic brain, let it develop for twenty years and then brought in the original mind, still organic, and compared the two of them. Would they be identical? Would they be anything at all alike? It’s possible that the organic brain could have degenerated due to physical problems. It’s possible that the uploaded brain will have stultified because of lack of stimulation. Anything is possible which is what makes it so interesting. Of course there are also very strong responsibilities involved also. Mr. Pohl also talked a little about how seriously the current crop of SF writers takes themselves and I really have to agree with im. I might want to write about this brain thing but, for now at least, I would be a little too intimidated to try it. I don’t even have a liberal arts education much less a degree in science.
Mr. Pohl responded to a question about whether he would choose immortality by saying he would live until bored and then he wouldn’t want to anymore. He said he didn’t fear death because when you are dead you never again have to do anything you don’t want to do. That’s a brilliant statement and certainly at odds with those who tell me I am going straight to Hell. I should think in Hell you have to do quite a lot of things you don’t want to do.

Someone got up to say as a member of the gay and lesbian community he was happy to see gay characters in Galaxy. Mr. Pohl said he writes about human beings and they come in all kinds. He has never believed in discrimination against homosexuals and there is no reason that you can’t govern a state, and here he went on to name a number of other things that of course should have nothing to do with what gender you happen to fall in love with but I interrupted him with a round of applause which was picked up by those around me.

He looked rather surprised by my clapping and maybe it was surprising but here we were in the heart of DC at this Festival which had the First Lady’s name all over it and by God I wanted to express my happiness at the rationality of what Mr. Pohl had to say. He finished by essentially saying he not only has never judged anyone by their sexual status but he doesn’t plan to start now.

Someone asked what it was like to be one of the last representatives of the Golden Age of Science Fiction and he asked “Do you mean what is it like to be over 80?” Then he talked about starting the first SF convention, various brilliant writers he knew, what it was like to be a total outsider who read stuff nobody else read, editing on the subway, his four page a day habit and how quitting smoking ruined it for him and a whole bunch of other topics.

He was so charming and sweet he made my heart hurt. At one point he said he called an older friend of his who is 96 to tell him he had just finished his new novel. The friend (whose name escapes me to my great shame) said he had also just finished a new novel. Mr. Pohl said he had just started a new novel and the friend said he had also. “At 96!” said Mr. Pohl. “I want to be just like him when I grow up.” It was so endearing to see this nearly 85 year old man talk about what he wants to do when he grows up.

I am so lucky I got to see him. It was totally serendipity. I had sat down in the tent because I was too sick to walk down to the signing tent and I just stayed there for every author until Neil came on. Thank God Cullen was back in time to hear Mr. Pohl because he’s old enough at 15 to remember what he heard and he’s so lucky at to have heard someone with such a weight of history behind him. Listening to a legend speak about something dear to your heart is a rare and wonderful thing.


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My own writing - more than five pages