"A Logic Named Joe" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American writer

Murray Leinster Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie ...

, first published in the March 1946 issue of '' Astounding Science Fiction''. (The story appeared under Leinster's real name, Will F. Jenkins. That issue of ''Astounding'' also included a story under the Leinster pseudonym called "Adapter".) The story is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy.

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.

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. This story was also published in ''The Great Science Fiction Stories'', Volume 8, 1946 Edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, November 1982

Listen to

A Logic Named Joe
Dimension X (episode #13), NBC radio, July 1, 1950
A Logic Named Joe
X Minus One, December 28, 1955

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Logic Named Joe, A Fictional computers 1946 short stories Science fiction short stories Works originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact Works by Murray Leinster