Save Us From Idiot Savants

Did Covid come from a Wuhan lab? Either way, technology’s mystique must be challenged

- Swagato Ganguly

Perhaps the greatest one-page science fiction ever written is ‘Answer’, by Fredric Brown. It’s set in the future where humanity has tamed nature, conquered the galaxies, and is hooking up a giant supercomputer that will contain all the knowledge in databases across the galaxies, linked through a kind of interplanetary internet.

When it’s finally plugged in, one of the assembled humans puts to it a question puzzling humanity through the ages: “Is there a God?” The supercomputer doesn’t hesitate a moment to answer: “Yes, now there is.” The full import of this answer strikes another of the assembled humans. He blanches in fear and rushes to unplug the supercomputer. But a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky strikes him down, and fuses the switch shut, assuring the supercomputer of endless power for its operations.

Many visionary writers have intuited the future. If the coronavirus was indeed created in a Wuhan research lab – and an article by science journalist Nicholas Wade (bit.ly/3wdY6jm), appearing in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, puts together very compelling evidence why we should think so – the obvious literary parallel that occurs is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Dr Frankenstein’s foul creation, in this case, being not so much a monster but a tiny virus. But Fredric Brown’s little story would be even closer to the mark. After all, even Frankenstein’s monster has some feelings, and is not nearly so destructive – while the coronavirus, like the supercomputer, becomes a pure artefact of technology.