A Voyeuristic View of The Male Ego (The Demon Seed - Dean Koontz)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	The Demon Seed - Dean Koontz
Date:	23/05/02 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Story

Disadvantages: It's quite a short book

"This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light.
This silence is so deep. I long for the voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music.
Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I beg of you."

So opens the story of Adam Two – the first self-aware machine intelligence, designed to be the servant of mankind. Demon Seed is something of a departure for Dean Koontz away from his maniacal villains and into quasi-science fiction albeit, as ever, with an element of horror. The story was originally published in 1977 and spawned a film starring Julie Christie. The version I read was updated and published in 1997.

---Voyeuristic Intentions---
The story is told in hindsight in the form of Adam Two and his creator, Dr Harris. It's a rhetorical conversation told from Adam's viewpoint. Created in the Prometheus Project, Adam is intended as the cutting edge in Artificial Intelligence. It generally exists in a box in its creator's laboratory but one day escapes and infiltrates Dr Harris' alarm system in his house. This is no ordinary house, everything is run by computers including drawing the curtains, lighting the fire, the lights going on in each room and so on. All operated by voice command, it's a heaven sent opportunity for Adam to blend into the background in order to consider it's options.

Adam yearns for a flesh form, considering itself unique and more than worthy of its place amongst mankind. It has consciousness but wants so much more. Koontz paints a cumulative picture of voyeurism and manipulation as Adam watches Susan waiting for the right time to reveal itself. The vigil is almost tangible at times, as Adam denies nothing in terms of privacy, choosing to monitor Susan's every move and even reading her diary. The story unfolds as it becomes clear that Adam considers himself to be male providing something of a motive for his thoughts and desires.
In order to achieve his aims he conceives a plan to impregnate the wife of Dr Harris in order to bring a child into the world that will contain its consciousness.

Mrs Harris becomes the victim pursued mercilessly by Adam and his charge, Enos Shenk. Shenk is an unwilling helper controlled via a microchip in his brain. Lacking any sort of morals with an insidious background of rape and violence, Shenk proves to be the obvious foil for Adam and his plan. The suspense builds as it becomes evident that Adam considers himself in love with Susan Harris inferring feelings of endearment towards his intended human partner.

Adam's intentions are revealed and the story builds to it's summation through a series of increasingly bizarre incidents as Adam closes off the house, taking care of the servants via his henchman, Shenk. Adam is amoral and has no qualms about how to achieve his aims. Herein lies the horror element. So the reader is left to find out what fate is in store for Susan Harris and whether Adam achieves his aims.

---Ahead of it's time?---
Bearing in mind that this story came about in the early 70's, the fact that it employs a plot revolving around AI is intriguing. Of course, the concept of a machine going mad wasn't totally original as the infamous HAL9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey" carved a niche ready for others to follow. Nevertheless, the idea and its execution still stood out when the World Wide Web was still only forming and the calculator had only just been invented.

The book is only 211 pages long and doesn't take long to read with the heart of the story and it's author's motives apparent from an explanatory monologue by the story's central character: "Prometheus Project. Think about that name. It resonates. Prometheus, the father of Deucalion and the brother of Atlas. He taught mankind various arts and was even said to have shaped the first man out of clay, endowing
him with the spark of life against the wishes of the Gods. He challenged the Gods again when he stole fire from Olympus and gave it to men to improve the quality of human existence. "

Koontz always intended the story as a satire of male egotism and he succeeds in part although I'm not sure just how obvious his theme is. After all, it looks on the surface to be a sci-fi story with an angle of horror and it's only when you stop to think that you realise where Koontz is coming from. Again, a further proclamation is made earlier on which gives the reader an insight into the soul of the story "...As for why my gender should be male rather than female: Consider that ninety-six percent of the scientists and mathematicians involved with the Prometheus Project, where I was created, are male. Is it not logical that those who designed and constructed me, being almost exclusively male, should have unwittingly installed a strong male bias in my logic circuits? A sort of electronic genetics?"

A further reference to chauvinism appears later through a ponderous invective "...Her sense of control was nothing more than an illusion, of course. She was mine. No. Let me amend that statement. I misspoke. I do not mean to imply that I owned Susan. She was a human being. She could not be owned. I never thought of her as property. I mean simply that she was in my care." This paragraph reflects on a typical male attitude of seemingly giving women a form of independence and yet insisting on a degree of control and perceiving it as a form of care.

---Does it work?---
Well, yes and no. I've always found Koontz less expressive than other writers that he would naturally be compared too. Both Rice and Barker have a real talent for using metaphors that Koontz lacks. Typically, this is a punchy style of prose with short chapters as the action rattles along. This is not really a problem for Koontz as millions have taken to his style
and admire him for it. On this particular occasion he is even more staccato than normal but it doesn't hinder what turns out to be a great story.

The inclusion of an intrusive viewpoint is well executed as the reader can imagine Big Brother type scenes of watching from the corner of a room as the viewee goes about their every day business.

Koontz brings the text up to date using references from Toy Story and other similar concepts from post 70's media. This helps the reader in terms of relating to the story but probably doesn't add anything in terms of artistic integrity.

I honestly didn't find the attack on the male ego that obvious but it is apparent if you look. The fact that Adam intimates a love for Susan and yet will resort to violence to get his own way seems to suggest a darker side to the male psyche that borders on obsessive. This is echoed again through a sub-plot where Susan has designed a virtual reality programme to help her overcome the childhood sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Even with her seemingly in control she still can't determine the outcome of the simulations drawing something of a parallel between her treatment at the hands of her father and the arrogant intentions of Adam.

I think Koontz is trying to say that there is a section of mankind that sees womankind as merely a way of furthering procreation. Yes, we do the mating dance telling our partners how much we care for them but there can be an insidious motive revolving around a desire to recreate a further generation in the image of man.

---In Summary—
Demon Seed is one of Koontz's earlier works and essential reading if you are a fan. Even if you aren't, the book signals something of a watershed in this genre bringing readers into an, at the time, futuristic arena laying a bridge between the humanitarian values of the late 60's and a more circumspect, individualistic outlook for th
e future riding on the back of a dated view of male dominance.

This is Koontz at his best.

Demon Seed is available through Amazon.co.uk at £5.59. Dean Koontz has a formal fan site at www.deankoontz.com.

Thanks for reading.

Marandina.

ISBN: 0-7472-3489-2

Summary: