{"id":4695,"date":"2022-07-04T10:55:50","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T10:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2022-07-04T10:55:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T10:55:53","slug":"the-human-operators-by-harlan-ellison-a-e-van-vogt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4695","title":{"rendered":"The Human Operators by Harlan Ellison &#038; A. E. Van Vogt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The Human Operators <\/em><\/strong>by Harlan Ellison &amp; A. E. Van Vogt (<em>F&amp;SF<\/em>, January 1971) opens<sup>1<\/sup> with the narrator completing a task in space outside what we later find is a generation spaceship. He is the only inhabitant, essentially the slave of the controlling AI, which keeps him in line by the use of electric shocks.<br>The story later sees the narrator repair one of the modules in the ship\u2019s intermind (where he hears voices\u2014I can\u2019t remember if this is ever adequately explained) so the ship can lower its \u201cdefractor shield\u201d (shades of <em>Star Trek<\/em>) and dock with one of the other ships in the fleet (there is some backstory about a Starfighter revolt before the AIs took over the various ships in the fleet).<br>After the narrator completes his task, a female from one of the other ships comes on board to mate with him (the humans on the ship only live until their thirties\u2014his father dies when he was fourteen, and his father\u2019s father likewise).<br>Eventually, (spoiler) the telegraphed revolt occurs when the narrator goes to the control room and fights the AI (which fights back by accelerating and decelerating the ship). He wins\u2014then the woman reveals that she is free too, and they should free the others in the fleet. However, after further discussions, they decide to go and settle on an alien planet instead.<br>Interesting start but, even though the individual scenes are competently enough done, the rest of the story never really convinces or coheres, especially the intermind\/talking voices part. And the final section, where they land on the alien planet and meet the natives, seems like it belongs to a different story.<br>** (Average). 7,850 words. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/arborhousetreasu00silv\/page\/488\/mode\/2up\">Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1. There is a short note before the story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>[To be read while listening to <em>Chronophagie<\/em>, \u201cThe Time Eaters\u2019\u2019: Music of Jacques Lasry, played on Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet (Columbia Masterworks Stereo MS 7314).]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Pretentious twaddle like this doesn\u2019t improve your clunky space opera.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Human Operators by Harlan Ellison &amp; A. E. Van Vogt (F&amp;SF, January 1971) opens1 with the narrator completing a task in space outside what we later find is a generation spaceship. He is the only inhabitant, essentially the slave of the controlling AI, which keeps him in line by the use of electric shocks.The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1121,289],"tags":[536,17,1122,1123,25,1124,290,7],"class_list":["post-4695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-e-van-vogt","category-harlan-ellison","tag-536","tag-17","tag-a-e-van-vogt","tag-ai-overlords","tag-fsf","tag-generation-spaceship","tag-harlan-ellison","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4699,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions\/4699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}