"The Pacifist" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1956 in ''

Fantastic Universe ''Fantastic Universe'' was a U.S. science fiction magazine which began publishing in the 1950s. It ran for 69 issues, from June 1953 to March 1960, under two different publishers. It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishin ...

''. It appears in his collection of "science fiction tall tales," ''

Tales from the White Hart ''Tales from the White Hart'' is a collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in the "club tales" style. Thirteen of the fifteen stories originally appeared across a number of different publications. "Moving Sp ...

''. The story deals with a computer programmer's revenge on his unreasonable military boss by tinkering with software code in a way that makes his boss the laughingstock of the organization. "The Pacifist" details the construction of a

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

within "a cavern in Kentucky" (Clarke may have been thinking of Mammoth Cave, then suspected, and later known, to be the world's longest known cave system). The purpose of the computer is military battle simulation, and the details of all known historical battles have been stored in the computer's data banks. The computer's designer, nicknamed "Dr.

Milquetoast Caspar Milquetoast was a popular American cartoon character created by H. T. Webster. The term “milquetoast” has since come to be used for a meek or timid person. Milquetoast may also refer to: *Dr. Milquetoast, a character in "The Pacifist" ...

" by the story-within-a-story's narrator, works under the harsh supervision of a military General. By way of revenge, Dr. Milquetoast programs the computer so that it will answer purely theoretical or mathematical questions put to it, but when asked to solve a military problem, responds by insulting the General using phrases industriously prepared by the programmer. Frustration mounts as the General realizes that because the computer is aware of every known historical military battle, it is capable of recognizing such scenarios even when couched in purely mathematical terms.

Analysis

The story presents a computer programmer as an " everyman," a downtrodden and unappreciated worker who has the last laugh on his tormentor. In 1956, computers were rare, and computer programmers were regarded as an engineering elite. Although the character of Dr. Milquetoast is depicted in a classic stereotypical fashion for his character's archetype, the frustration he feels, at the hands of the General, humanizes the character. Published near the beginning of the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, "The Pacifist" satirizes the military-industrial complex (although the term would not come into wide use for another five years.) The involvement of civilian scientists in military projects was familiar to the reading public, notably the involvement of J. Robert Oppenheimer's team of nuclear scientists in the Manhattan Project, under the military leadership of General Leslie Groves.

Legacy

The story's theme of a military computer gone haywire has been used numerous times in written and filmed science fiction. Later examples include ''

Dr. Strangelove ''Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'', known simply and more commonly as ''Dr. Strangelove'', is a 1964 black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and t ...

'' (1964), '' Colossus: The Forbin Project'' (novel, 1966, film version, 1970), and '' WarGames'' (1983).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pacifist, The Short stories by Arthur C. Clarke 1956 short stories Works originally published in Fantastic Universe Kentucky in fiction Tales from the White Hart