F/SF

Smith, George O. The Fourth R. 1959. Dell, 1979.
In 1959, George O. Smith took a break from space opera to write The Fourth R, a speculative fiction novel about education. Here’s the setup: James Holden is a precocious five-year-old whose parents have invented a teaching machine that gives him perfect recall of everything he reads. He runs away from the care of his villainous uncle and makes his way in the world by writing children’s stories and living an anonymous life in an adult world not geared toward independent children. The plot is hokey and melodramatic, but the story makes telling points about the relationship of learning to skill and experience. 3.5 stars. ( )

This book matures as it goes along. Apt, this, for a tale of accelerated maturity through technologically enhanced learning.

Which does not mean it ends perfectly. It ends oddly.

Three things, mere notes of personal interest, in place of a full review:

1. When the tale’s legal problems flower into full courtroom drama, it becomes apparent that aspects of common law seem unfamiliar to the author (nevertheless the courtroom scene is very good).

2. The legality of a minor maintaining a secret independence from the State is a very interesting problem, and is here treated more seriously than in the excellent film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. This being acknowledged, it seems to me the author skirted one obvious pitfall: taxes. And my mind wandered back to that issue time and again while reading this novel.

3. Though the use of the word ‘faggot,’ in the conclusion is not incorrect, it sure is jarring.

(Original Review, 1980-07-21)

It looks like what both of you are saying is that Smith was accurately describing his contemporary technology transplanted, unchanged, some number of centuries into the future --- which I would consider to be a major failing on the part of a science fiction writer; to assume that a technology will simply stand still, especially when he'd seen the advances that had taken place in his own lifetime, is simply foolish. Obviously he couldn't predict which direction technology would develop in --- the transistor was a quantum leap in electronics design, especially for someone as mired in practicalities as Smith was --- so it looks like he decided to set up a future about which he could talk knowledgeably in 40's terms rather than simply saying "this will have happened" and leaving it at that to concentrate on the rest of the story. I suppose that's reasonable, given that the stories were written to an audience that liked highly technical discussions of the solution of technical problems, but from current perspective it badly dates not just the stories but the style and the (sub) genre.

I have one cavil with the explanations given, however; digital information was the first to be transmitted over radio (i.e., Morse code), and in fact Smith does describe the VE system as involving digitalized transmission. I think I take your intended meaning: that because digital computers were virtually nonexistent (likewise TV) the average electronicist [2018 EDIT: What the hell is an “electronicist “; I must talk to my former self… ] would have little reason to think in terms of the order of data transmission rates we consider routine today, provided he was (as Smith apparently was) not all that interested in anything that wasn't right in front of him.

It's interesting that this also shows up in some of Smith's other works. In THE FOURTH "R" (aka THE BRAIN MACHINE, or some such awful title), he edges toward the typical technician's mistake of assuming that intelligence is easily quantifiable --- potentially even measurable in terms of current knowledge (which is all that a lot of the current standardized tests can do). He acknowledges in passing that the boy-hero has little or no judgment but shows him surviving in situations where judgment --- and its parallel attribute, the ability to synthesize conclusions from data --- is required. Take for example the first scene, in which it is stated that he is an accomplished bridge player at the age of ~6. Bridge is like chess, in that attempting to memorize and grade all possible situations is not the way the masters do it and probably not strictly the way winning computers will succeed in it; patterns must be recognized and probabilities calculated (especially in bridge, which has subtleties such as deliberately playing the "wrong" card in order to confuse the opponents or reduce their chances of regaining control) to apply current knowledge to new situations (doesn't this sound more like a better definition of genius than being a walking encyclopedia?).

I suppose all this may be taking Smith a good deal too seriously; I've never seen anything suggesting that most of his stories were intended as more than light entertainment. But "pure" entertainment is especially likely to reflect the prejudices and unquestioned assumptions of its audience (if it doesn't it will be disturbing, which isn't entertaining to most people), and even if the average ASTOUNDING reader didn't share Claude Degler's beliefs in SF fans as the/ future rulers, there's evidence in many of the most popular stories of that period of the contempt of the self-defined superior types for their alleged inferiors (consider the remark in HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL that anyone who can't use a sliderule is an illiterate who shouldn't be allowed to vote, or another ASTOUNDING story (by Smith but never reprinted as far as I can find) in which literacy itself is a profession, accepted as necessary but considered by the public to be undesirable in anyone not a member of the guild (come to think of it, the social situation is similar to that of the Espers in THE DEMOLISHED MAN, except that Smith is taking a didactic position rather than standing open to argument).

I know I've got some arguable positions here; I'll be interested to see what anyone comes up with in the line of corroboration or opposition.

About communicating over interplanetary distances.

I think George O. Smith was pretty accurate with his radio information for his day (late 1940s). One of his stories mentions 'bouncing radar off the moon' which was done at 400 MHz by the Signal Corps in 1946 (Project Diana). They used umpteen kilowatts but by the the late '60s and in the '70s, hams were communicating via moon-bounce with one kilowatt. How? Two reasons: higher frequencies/high gain antennas and better low-noise amplifiers for the receiver. Smith had to work with tubes, which are pretty noisy; I think the parametric amplifier (magic with non-linear capacitors) and the maser amplifier were invented in the fifties. Smith's stuff about penetrating the ionosphere was bunk though - of course no one had yet been above it!

I recall an article about interplanetary communications engineering in the IEEE Communications Society magazine. The data rates from the first Mariner spacecraft were about nine bits per second. These days, spacecraft like the Voyagers can run at 10 to 50 kilobits from Jupiter distances - but it takes a 200 foot receiver dish and a cryogenically cooled receiver amplifier. Getting 90 megabits (TV) from a satellite only 40,000 klicks out is child's play. Remember, the received signal runs as the inverse square of the distance.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )

An interesting book, in which the author explores the meaning of 'education' when mere facts are easily downloaded into our minds. Hmm, saying anything more could spoil the plot, so I shan't say any more. ( )