They’d Rather Be Right.

Mark Clifton and Frank Riley’s They’d Rather Be Right won the second Hugo Award for Best Novel and is widely regarded today as the worst of all of the 66 winners of that prize. It was later reissued with two related short stories appended to the beginning of it and sold as The Forever Machine, which is the version I read, and the main story is not improved any but the inclusion of those two extra bits. I couldn’t get over what a shame this entire book was, because there’s a germ of an idea at the heart of it that is actually quite relevant today – what might artificial intelligence do for us, and how it might be able to change civilization if we’re willing to let it.

Two professors, with the help of a natural telepath named Joey, build a ‘cybernetic machine’ they name Bossy, which operates quite a bit like today’s backpropagation AI programs do, but with the unstated condition that, in the world of this novel, P is actually equal to NP and thus all problems that can be verified quickly can be solved in polynomial time. Bossy can answer anything and somehow can reverse aging and make people immortal. The media gets stirred up against Bossy at first, so the professors have to dismantle it, take it into hiding, and rebuild it in a flophouse in San Francisco, eventually gaining the help of a local industrialist who controls major media outlets and enlisting some help from the military to protect it. When their first patient reverse-ages about 30 years and starts talking like a Buddhist who’s achieved nirvana, the uproar threatens to engulf the project and potentially end it.

There’s a decent premise in there, and the title comes from a funny exchange about whether people would give up their most cherished beliefs and preconceived notions in exchange for a life of immortality, wisdom, and peace. One of the inventors of Bossy says that given that choice, most people would reject what Bossy was offering, saying “they’d rather be right” than gain everything there possibly is to gain. But my word is the execution here terrible. The three main inventors, all men, are paper-thin and boring; even Joey’s telepathy is just a crutch, not really important to Bossy’s development, but a way for him to control other people the way Second Foundation experts in Isaac Asimov’s series use mentalics. The woman who becomes Bossy’s first success story, Mabel, is the hackneyed hooker with a heart of gold, and about as interesting as paste even before her transformation – and she’s worse afterwards.

It’s also never really clear why the public rages against Bossy early in the book and then clamors for it later. Yes, public opinion often goes against new technologies or scientific progress if a large portion of the population doesn’t understand it – GMOs are the best modern example – but that’s not well set up here at all. If someone invents a Forever Machine, what fool wouldn’t take it? Even if I told you that it wouldn’t extend your lifespan, but would remove any effects of aging and protect you against cancer and autoimmune diseases and more, and also gave you greater intelligence and inner peace, you’re still saying no? People spend billions of dollars on useless supplements to try to get a little healthier. If someone invents Bossy, they’ll need an army to keep people away from it.

I’ve got a few more Hugo winners to review here that I’ve already read, and right now I have just four left: C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen; Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky; and the second and third novels in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Vinge’s book I’ll read soon enough – it’s just long, but I do find his books interesting, even if they move a little slow. But those Mars books … given how awful Red Mars is, and yes, it’s a more painful read than even this dreck, I’m in no rush to read them just for the sake of finishing a list.