Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

Autofac • (1955) by P.K. Dick

From the anthology The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick. See The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

The story is an automated factory — or rather, a networked collection of factories, all running amok at peak production. The remaining population of earth would like to these autofacs to stop before they exhaust all of Earth's natural resources.

The factories make regular deliveries of supplies to the settlements. The residence tried various ways of getting the attention of the factory, in the hopes of talking into stopping. Some of the ideas are clever, and they do eventually manage to get through to customer service — automated customer service, of course. When that doesn't help, they try more interesting techniques.

In the notes, Dick mentions that one reviewer suggested this was the first ecological sci-fi, but Dick himself viewed it as a tale of automation (these days we might call it AI) evolving to take on other characteristics of the life it imitates, including self-preservation and eventually reproduction.

Technology: I always like to look at old stories for their technology, though in this case the story seems to take place in the very near future to 1955, so not surprising the technology looks a lot like 1955. I noticed references to magnetic tape and porta-punch cards. Given when the story was written, at the very dawn of the computer age, it has an interesting view of future intelligent factories. He's also far ahead of his time in the concept of “networked factories", since computer networks are still over a decade in his future.

One of the questions that struck me when O'Neill & Co. were trying to stop the factory deliveries was, Why? If some factory wants to keep sending you food and consumer goods, why argue? Maybe I'm just lazy, but I think I'd prefer to have my milk delivered than go out every morning and milk the cows. The rugged individuals here seem strangely eager to do their own work. It's not until the end of the story that O'Neill wonders whether what he has wrought is what he really wanted.

In a modern SF context, it seems less insightful that I think it was. I give it 4 pizzles.

The setup is classic PKD, with some "everymen" puzzled by some odd goings-on in their world. The back-and-forth with the "company representative" was hilariously ridiculous. I always enjoy PKD's sense of humor. I gave it 4 stars.

Randy wrote: "The back-and-forth with the "company representative" was hilariously ridiculous. I always enjoy PKD's sense of humor. ..."

"It's one track mind had completely triumphed."

I noted that Dick specifies that the voice of the company representative is a pre-recording by its original creators. "O'Neill could vividly imagine the dead young man whose cheerful voice now issued from the mechanical mouth..."

Reminded me of Tomorrow's Eve, an 1884 "hard SF" novel (for 1884) that imagines Thomas Edison creating an android (the novel is the first use of that term), again by using pre-recorded responses (in this case with Edison's phonograph, less than a decade old at the time of the writing.) I find it interesting that in both cases the author completely misses the hard part, voice recognition, so that the robot can understand what he said to it. Clearly there's no sense mentioning a technology you have no idea how to create. :)

"One of the questions that struck me when O'Neill & Co. were trying to stop the factory deliveries was, Why? "

Maybe the people just wanted to regain their independence as well as the freedom to have more options/choices. Not just choices on end products but also how it's produced etc.

We see new products of milk in the market everytime. Sometimes it's also based on the current trend - soy, organic, whatever.
It's not like the autofac could create a new milk version based on current taste? Not all products can endure the test of time. People just want the freedom to be creative as well, I think.

I just loved the fact that the autofacs can rebuilt themselves - found it really funny at the end.

So, this is an early example of a "grey goo" story, yes? Simple intelligences programmed to reproduce without boundaries that ends up absorbing all resources. A lesson about how its important to always include a killswitch in your designs.

Geezer wrote: "One of the questions that struck me when O'Neill & Co. were trying to stop the factory deliveries was, Why?"

It was draining every local source of metal to deliver bad-tasting milk-substitute and (presumably useless) consumer electronics. Probably the people wanted to reprogram the autofacs to produce things like farming implements.

One of the things I liked about the story was the ambiguity about the "Why bother?" question. (Ultimately, I think it resonates with some of the contemporary debates around universal incomes.) At the opening, the story seems pretty firmly on the side of the humans -- there's the destruction of natural resources issue to justify them, but it seems clear that just as or more important is the ideal of independence and self-sufficiency -- and yet the very first meaningful thing our heroes do is this act of wanton destruction. By the end of the story, O'Neill is doubting himself, and the humans' happy pioneer fantasies have been sharply punctured. You wonder what they would have accomplished if, as a group, they had accepted the provided necessities-plus-junk and set goals for themselves that went beyond "earn our own sustenance again." (They seemed to be able to request different things from their robodeliveries, but presumably only things that had been designed pre-war?)

I love the end of the story, where the factory continues as a kind of alien society/robot ant farm -- kind of funny, very strange.

Hillary wrote: "You wonder what they would have accomplished if, as a group, they had accepted the provided necessities-plus-junk and set goals for themselves that went beyond "earn our own sustenance again."

My interpretation was that this was impossible for them due to autofac-induced raw materials shortage.