Stories of Your Life and Others

This story is narrated from third person point of view with consciousness centered on Robert Stratton, an English Victorian scientist. It is an example of the steampunk subgenre of science fiction. The latter part of 19th century is part of an alternative universe, where retrofuturistic inventions form everyday reality.

Robert Stratton creates automata, robots that work based on the “names” inserted into them. Working in the field of “nomenclature,” Robert devises names that allow automata to complete complex tasks. Each name consists of 72 Hebrew letters, arranged in 12 rows of six; the theology of the time states that all names are “reflections of the divine name” (142), and the action of a true name is to animate each object. This produced legendary golems. However, “current thinking held that there was a lexical universe as well as a physical one, and bringing an object together with a compatible name caused the latent potentialities of both to be realized” (143).

As a young boy, Robert witnesses his friend Lionel’s attempt to keep sperm alive under laboratory conditions. In this era and universe, people still believe that all living things were created at the beginning of time and lie dormant waiting their turn to exist. This inspires Robert to study nomenclature and alphabetic manipulation. He learns that each 72-letter name is a combination of epithets that ascribe an object or being with a particular characteristic. During this time, there are two distinct classes of names: those that animate bodies, and amulets which merge functions under the new science of thermodynamics.

Robert begins work at Coade Manufactory, the premier makers of automata in England. He creates an automaton with flexible fingers that is able to cast another automaton, reducing the costs of production and labor so that someday each family can afford one. His head sculptor, Willoughby, is appalled by the invention because it will cause sculptors to lose their jobs. Willoughby threatens to go on strike.

Lord Fieldhurst, a famous zoologist and President of the Royal Society, approaches Robert with a secret assignment: the development of “megafetuses” that grow from a spermatozoon into size of an adult human in a fortnight. Megafetuses would theoretically help scientists examine the future human generations nested in the sperm to see how the species will develop. Originally created by the French, these show “that the human species has the potential to exist for only a fixed number of generations, and we are within five generations of the final one” (159). Dr. Ashbourne, Fieldhurst’s associate and Robert’s former lecturer, confirms that humanity is nearing its end, and that loss of human fertility will soon become evident. Ashbourne also experiments with impressing the inscriptions of names, or euonyms, onto unfertilized frog ova, with the aim of finding a name that would allow “mankind to perpetuate itself through nomenclature” (164). The men wish to impregnate women secretly whose husbands are infertile, and they invite Robert to participate, while continuing his own work. Fieldhurst uses the power of the Royal Society to persuade the Brotherhood of Sculptors not to strike.

Robert begins to learn about the nomenclature used to animate organisms, centering on epithets for the male or female sex. Male participation in the development of fetuses is no longer relevant, as the organism can take shape from lexical stimulation. Ashbourne extrapolates that using two levels of thermodynamic order would allow the creation of two generations within an organism, making one generation of male specimens fertile.

Robert receives a visit from Benjamin Roth, a Kabbalist mystic who views nomenclature as a sacred ritual. He asks Robert to share his findings so that Roth’s brethren can meditate on such advanced nomenclature and get closer to God. Roth also says he discovered a name that allows a golem to write the name that animates it. Robert refuses, incurring Roth’s anger.

In discussion with Lord Fieldhurst and Ashbourne, Robert learns the Lord’s plans to utilize their discovery to prevent the poor from having too many children, while promoting wealthier families of pure “racial stock.” Appalled at the idea, Stratton again makes a case for improving the living and working condition of the poor, but to no avail. After Fieldhurst leaves the room, Ashbourne suggests to Robert that they should keep their idea of a two-generation name a secret.

The next evening, Robert visits Coade Manufactory, only to discover Benjamin Roth dead in his office. He was searching the office for Robert’s nomenclature when an assassin interrupted him and tortured him for information. The assassin now pursues Stratton through the factory. Finding himself cornered, Stratton writes out a name for an automaton to keep the door from opening. The assassin sets the automaton on fire, entering the room soon afterwards and pinning Stratton to the floor. As he questions him about existing copies of his work, Lord Fieldhurst’s servant appears and incapacitates the assassin, telling Robert the man was hired by Willoughby.

The next morning, Robert finds Roth’s notebook among the papers he took the factory. He realizes that Roth’s epithet for inscribing an automaton’s own name would, in combination with his own for dexterity, allow the automaton to reproduce itself. He realizes then that it would be sufficient to induce a fetus that bears its own name to assure lexical duplication, and therefore fertility: “[W]hen such a spermatozoon reached an ovum, the name would induce the creation of a new foetus. The species would be able to reproduce itself without medical intervention, because it would carry the name within itself” (193). Instead of containing future specimens to be born, the new humans would bear lexical representations of themselves. In this manner, no one would be able to control fertility of certain groups of people. Stratton sits down at his desk to begin composing the new name.