Call Me Joe
Call me Joe (1957) is a science fiction story by Poul Anderson. It is concerned with an attempt to explore the surface of the planet Jupiter using remotely controlled artificial life-forms.
At the time the story was written, the detailed structure of Jupiter was not well known, although it was known from measurements of the planets mass that it must consist largely of gases. Based on observations from space probes it is believed (as of 2005) that the solid core of the planet is surrounded by regions of high pressure and temperature that would make life impossible on any terms. Call me Joe posits a surface at very low temperatures, so that ice is a hard solid and methane a liquid.
Plot
Template:Spoiler Joe is awakened in his den, where some a pack of some kind of local predator is attacking him. Using his great strength, and weapons made from sculpted ice, he kills the animals and, exultant, bays at the moon in the sky above him. At that point a vital component shorts out and Joe reverts to being a human, Ed Anglesey, wearing a special headset on a space station orbiting Jupiter. Anglesey furiously repairs the equipment to restore the connection.
It transpires that the equipment failures are happening more and more often. All technical fixes have failed, and instead a psychologist, Cornelius, is brought to the station to determine if Anglesey himself is the problem.
Anglesey is confined to a wheelchair, and bad tempered. He dislikes all his colleagues and is disliked in return. Only the special talents that enable him to use the partly-telepathic equipment that controls Joe keep him on the station. Cornelius begins with the theory that something in Anglesey's makeup rejects or is afraid of Jupiter, and the resulting feedback keeps destroying the delicate equipment.
Eventually Cornelius is allowed to share a session with Anglesey during an important part of the mission. A set of autonomous female Jovians, created to live on the surface, but with their own minds, is scheduled to land. Joe is to be the leader, and father, of a new race that will live on the planet. During this Cornelius becomes aware of a third mind - that of Joe himself. Anglesey's mind has been steadily transforming itself into Joe, and shrinking in the process. Cornelius was looking at the problem from the wrong end - it was Joe's fear of leaving Jupiter that was causing the blowouts. Anglesey's existence is poor and constricted compared to Joe's, and the environment has shaped a personality that no longer wants to be human.
Seeing himself from Cornelius's perspective, Joe becomes fully self aware. He ejects Cornelius from the loop and shuts down what is left of Anglesey.
Cornelius revives on the station, next to the hollow shell of Anglesey's body. Far from being dismayed, Cornelius realizes that this is the way of the future. From now on paraplegics, people with diseased bodies, and even the aged can be recruited for the Jovian program if they have the necessary talents. Eventually they will leave their bodies behind and become Jovians in the flesh, functioning as the priesthood of the new race.
External links
- Call me Joe title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database