# Increased intelligence in SF



## Lapuspuer (Nov 28, 2008)

Ever since I read _Flowers for Algernon_ I've loved the kind of stories in which somebody becomes more intelligent, so I thought of opening a thread in which to discuss the subject, hoping there's not a similar thread already (as far as I've been able to check there is none).

So I hope this can become a place where to discuss the plots, the pros and cons of the stories you read on the subject, or on the topic itself of increased intelligence if you like.


Since I opened this thread, I guess it's my duty to start the discussion, so I'll mention two of the most outstanding books in the field (in my opinion of course):

Daniel Keyes's _Flowers for Algernon_
Poul Anderson's _Brain Wave_ (the premise - every man and animal on Earth gets smarter - is brilliant, although it's not my favourite book artistically speaking)


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## Omphalos (Nov 28, 2008)

IIRC there was a recent thread about this. I only vaguely recall it though, so it may be one of the threads that got eaten when the board farted a few weeks ago. 

Camp Concentration is a good one about forced intelligence gains. 

Understand, a novella by Ted Chiang is about this too. Both are excellent (scroll down to find this story in the link I have pasted here).  

Forced gains in intelligence make for pretty interesting stories, but I also really appreciate the stories that deal with the evolution of intelligence, like The Time Machine, Last and First Men, and More than Human.


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## Scifi fan (Nov 29, 2008)

A good movie about that is Lawnmower Man (not the novel by Stephen King, the movie). Yes, I enjoy stories about people getting smarter.


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## Lapuspuer (Nov 29, 2008)

Oh, yes, _The Lawnomower Man,_ how could I forget that! I went for the book after I saw the movie, but I was disappointed to see they had nothing in common.
A short story by Stephen king I enjoyed immensely is _The end of the Whole Mess_, even though it's the exact opposite of the topic we're supposed to be discussing here.

And thanks for the tips, Omphalos. After I read your review I'm committed to find _understand _and _Camp Concentration_.


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 2, 2008)

Talking about the evolution of intelligence, a book I found very interesting is Charles Stross's _Accelerando,_ although it's technological rather than biological evolution. 
Each generation - thanks to more advanced neural implants and such - is far brighter than the previous one (which leads to ever-aggravating misunderstandings between parents and children), more and more artificial intelligences are being born at the side of human beings, until more or less all the mass of Solar System is used for computation and a few "unevolved" - or not too evolved - men are left, utterly unable to imagine what the new intelligences may be thinking or doing.
It was hard, but I think I've been able to avoid major spoilers.


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## Scifi fan (Dec 3, 2008)

My problem with such stories is that, if they were using the MS operating systems ...

I'm not just being facetious; my enjoyment of science fiction is based on the world I live in, and I'm a little skeptical about the power of computers to be the be all and end all.


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## Delvo (Dec 3, 2008)

There was a John Travolta movie, I think called "Phenomenon", about a guy who suddenly developed unusual mental abilities. I didn't see the movie, but the trailer implied that it happened after he was near the site of an object falling to the ground from space.

Personal story from a friend of the family about it, involving a spoiler:



Spoiler



Our childhood piano teacher and her kids wanted to take their husband & father out to a light feelgood movie to give him a bit of a cheer-up distraction after his brain tumor/cancer diagnosis. This movie did not work as planned; the main character turned out to have a brain problem, and apparently died of it at the end.


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 6, 2008)

Delvo said:


> Our childhood piano teacher and her kids wanted to take their husband & father out to a light feelgood movie to give him a bit of a cheer-up distraction after his brain tumor/cancer diagnosis.


 Oh. I'm sorry for your piano teacher.


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 6, 2008)

Another instance of the topic that I just thought of is Alfred Elton van Vogt's _The Proxy Intelligence_, although I have to admit I didn't understand all of it (which happens quite often when I read van Vogt).

Another excellent story I should have remembered before is Lewis Padgett's _The Prisoner in the Skull, _in which a character has limitless inventive abilities but is almost deprived of free will, and he's even unable to speak. I can't tell you anything more without spoilers, but if you take my advice, read it.


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## Omphalos (Dec 6, 2008)

Mimsy Were the Borogoves comes to mind too.  Also by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and his wife C.L. Moore).


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 9, 2008)

Umm... I consider _Mimsy Were the Borogoves_ more as a "exotic knowledge found" than a "increased intelligence" story, but I suppose it depends on where you trace the separation mark.

Since we're talking about Lewis Padgett I'll also mention _When the Bough Breaks - _about the development of one's potential rather than actual augmentation of intelligence, but again doesn't seem such a fundamental difference.


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## J-Sun (Dec 10, 2008)

Coincidentally, I just read Nancy Kress' "End Game" in the Hartwell annual (which started off horribly but seems to be getting better). I'm not sure it qualifies, either, though, as it's more about a concentration enhancement that has the effect of making people much better at their chosen monomania but, unfortunately, incompetent at most everything else. Everything from neurobiology to chess to planting roses figures in. Not a great story, perhaps, but interesting and at least close to being on topic.

As mentioned, though, "Flowers for Algernon" is really the definitive personal statement and Anderson's _Brain Wave_ makes a noteworthy stab at a sociological one.


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## Omphalos (Dec 10, 2008)

Lapuspuer said:


> Umm... I consider _Mimsy Were the Borogoves_ more as a "exotic knowledge found" than a "increased intelligence" story, but I suppose it depends on where you trace the separation mark.
> 
> Since we're talking about Lewis Padgett I'll also mention _When the Bough Breaks - _about the development of one's potential rather than actual augmentation of intelligence, but again doesn't seem such a fundamental difference.


 
You might want to reread that story.  THe younger child went through some very serious changes, and did not just find some cool toys.  In the movie they certainly did just find neat things.  But in the story itself IIRC the children advanced so far in their intelligence that they lost the ability to communicate with ordinary humans, which is exactly the same plot device used by Keyes and Chiang.


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 11, 2008)

Omphalos said:


> You might want to reread that story. THe younger child went through some very serious changes, and did not just find some cool toys. In the movie they certainly did just find neat things. But in the story itself IIRC the children advanced so far in their intelligence that they lost the ability to communicate with ordinary humans, which is exactly the same plot device used by Keyes and Chiang.


 
Sure the adults could no longer understand the children's thoughts, but I'd assumed the new logic was different from our own, rather than more complex. The toys are based on alien thought patterns that only kids - having a more plastic mind, not yet clouded by preconceptions - can begin to learn. That's also why the little girl learns it faster than her bigger brother.

It would be like talking about modern mathematics with Pythagoras - his concept of number (ratio between whole quantities) would prevent him to understand irrational or even imaginary numbers. But a boy from his same age would understand them, if taught (it'd take a heckuva educational toy to teach non-Euclidean geometry or such, but we can assume pedagogy has progressed immensely in the future the story starts in).


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## K. Riehl (Dec 11, 2008)

I like the premise of these stories but I always wonder (as in Flowers for Algernon)why don't they apply their increased intelligence to perfecting the medical procedure so that he doesn't revert back?


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 13, 2008)

In _Flowers for Algernon_ it's just lack of time. The protagonist, Charlie Gordon, only manages to prove the process is temporary before his intelligence starts decaying. After all he's become a genius, but not so superhumanly intelligent that he can devise new brain surgery techinques in a single burst of inspiration. 
I couldn't tell about _Understand _or _Camp concentration_, which I've not read yet. 

In some stories it's the protagonist who decides he doesn't like to be smart any longer and uses his brainpower to revert himself back to his previous form. I'm thinking of _Flowers for Rhino_ here, a Marvel Comic tribute to _Flowers for Algernon _(after all, a series usually requires the _status quo_ to be restored at the end of each episode).


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## Omphalos (Dec 13, 2008)

Charley also was not told what would happen to him in Flowers for Algernon, so he did not realize the problem before he started losing his intelligence.


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## Lapuspuer (Dec 21, 2008)

Still about the evolution of intelligence - the ultimate instance of it is probably _The Star Maker_ by Olaf Stapledon. It follows, although briefly, the maturation of many civilizations form semi-barbarism (that's supposed to be the state of Earth now) to intellectual and moral awakening; it then goes through the merging of individual minds into planet-wide, galaxy-wide and finally a single universe-wide collective mind. And that's not all: this cosmic mind is aware it's not reached its potential - many species went extinct before they could mature enough to join it - and witnesses the creation of other universes, that bear even more perfect and intelligent cosmic minds.

Also the narrator - a man wandering in space in an out-of-body experience - meets other disembodied consciousnesses travelling through the universe, and blends with them in a more powerful collective mind that is able to witness all the above, that would be unintelligible for a mere human being. Actually the narrator explains he has very faint recollections of his experiences, now that he writes them, having returned to his original condition.


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## skeptic_heptic (Dec 22, 2008)

does Rain Man count?  You can interpret that over the course of time, he got smarter.  Also, in some cases he was smarter!


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## jojajihisc (Jun 12, 2010)

> *Understand*, a novella by Ted Chiang is about this too. Both are excellent (scroll down to find this story in the link I have pasted here).



I saw this thread title after reading this novelette today and thought I'd mention it if it hadn't been already. This is a tremendously rich little story about developing the brain's full potential. Chiang can do no wrong.


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## J Riff (Jun 12, 2010)

SLAN  by A.E. Van Vogt  

Also  The Dreaming Lewels aka The Synthetic Man  by Theodore Sturgeon
not exactly on topic but you should read it anyway > )


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## The_African (Jun 25, 2010)

In the second book of the My Teacher Is An Alien series by Bruce Coville, the protagonist has his brain 'fried' by an alien and becomes the most intelligent human alive. I loved these books when I was a child (I still do), I recently reread them a few days ago.


It's a children's series, for the record.


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## Doctor Crankenstein (Jun 26, 2010)

I quite like the ancient knowledge devices in Stargate SG1. The overflow of knowledge nearly kills O'Neill because the human brain doesn't have the capacity to store so much knowledge. 

It kind of makes sense. Your brain isn't built to be able to handle 'more than it can handle'. Increasing intelligence doesn't quite make sense to me unless it somehow effects the physiology of the brain. If you are granted 'increased intelligence' it makes sense that it would be somewhat like over-clocking your CPU, Increased performance but more wear-and-tear and heat.


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## jojajihisc (Jul 1, 2010)

Vernor Vinge's first story he ever wrote *Bookworm, Run!* is about "intelligence amplification" of a chimpanzee as is *Evil Robot Monkey* by Mary Robinette Kowal. Both are good stories despite the latter not even being 1000 words long.


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## chrispenycate (Jul 1, 2010)

Lots of increased intelligence (as in problem solving ability (in SF; the Brennan monster (not quite a Pak Protector) in Niven's 'Protector'; the sleepless in Kress's 'Beggars' trilogy, the genemod geniuses in Turner's Brainchild or even the isolated Brain in CS Lewis' 'That hideous strength' all have greater intellect than mere unimproved humans, but I rarely see genetic enhancement for wisdom.


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## merritt (Jul 2, 2010)

Thread made me think of Consequences of increased intelligence - Harrison Bergeron - kurt V.

a little off topic


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## Taltos (Jul 2, 2010)

Strange that no-one has mentioned David Brin *Uplift *books in this thread  or Greg Bear *Blood Music *- when you are talking about increased intelligence


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