Ethics and alterity

Abstract

In Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars (1956), the young adventurer Alvin asks the godlike Central Computer of the city of Diaspar to unlock the memory, sealed by an ancient religious cult until the second coming of their gods, of a superannuated robot he has discovered. The Computer replies, “Your order involves two problems. One is moral, one technical” (Clarke 2001: 181), then tricks the robot with an illusion of the second coming. Resolving the technical problem renders the moral problem moot. This moment in a prime example of “Golden Age” sf concisely illustrates an essential tension within the genre: on the one hand, the pressure of technoscientic solutions to engineer the erasure of traditional human morality, and on the other, the persistence of questions concerning the causes and consequences of right action.