A Son of the Rock

Methuen, 1985, 193 p

On an Earth where robots are commonplace Jasperodus is the only such construct with consciousness -€“ a fact which he* has to hide.

Free robots are hunted by the Borgor – a hegemony of robot-hating humans. After an encounter with the custodian of the last Temple of Zoroaster on Earth and a Borgor disruption of an architectural dig with which Jasperodus is involved he flees along with another robot, Cricus.

During their travels they meet various others of their kind including Dr Viss who imitates all things human – even down to eating, drinking and evacuation. This section contained a passably amusing never ending football game between teams of black and white robots (latest score: 49,543 -€“ 51,038.)

With Cricus’€™s promptings Jasperodus is drawn into the quasi-religious orbit of Gargar, a robot who wishes to induce in all robots full consciousness, as opposed to mere awareness of self. He wishes to give them souls: the superior light as he calls it. This necessitates experimenting on human captives to extract their essences. Jasperodus views the project as dangerous and from this point on the book concentrates on his efforts to thwart Gargar; which necessitates his entering Borgor land to seek their help, with all the attendant dangers that entails.

And The Rod Of Light of the title? This is the mechanism – a tube containing coherence modulated light (which is thus conscious of itself ) – by which Gargar intends to decant full awareness into himself and other robots.

Partly due to the various discussions of the nature of consciousness the book is somewhat dry, a drawback which is reinforced by the absence of the normal invocations of sensory impressions that usually obtain with novels; all of which makes it difficult to warm to the protagonist. There are also diversions into Zoroastrian philosophy and a deal of telling rather than showing.

Apart from its brevity the book shows other signs of its age, then, but it is still worthwhile to experience Bayley’€™s take on what it means to be (not) human.

*I have used male personal pronouns throughout, even though robots cannot be said to be gendered, as this is what Bayley himself does. Perhaps this is why the constructs depicted here all seem to have masculine dispositions.