"Call Me Joe"
Short story by Poul Anderson
First publication
Cover art by Frank Kelly Freas
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science fiction
Publication
Publication dateApril 1957

"Call Me Joe" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Poul Anderson (1926–2001), first published in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1957.[1] It has been frequently anthologized,[2] including in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973), a collection of unusually outstanding works selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

The story involves a future program by humans to explore and settle the surface of the planet Jupiter. (At the time of publication, it was considered plausible that the planet had a solid surface.) Because the Jovian environment is extreme (gravity, pressure, temperature, hydrogen/ammonia atmosphere, liquid methane) — and thus humans cannot descend to the surface — a prototype synthetic life-form is created and remote-controlled by technologically enhanced telepathy (psionics). This intelligent creature (which happens to resemble a centaur) is inserted among the native Jovian life-forms, none of which are sentient. The controller and operator of this artificial body is a severely disabled human.

Plot summary

Joe is awakened in his den, when a pack of predators are attacking him. Using his great strength, and weapons made from sculpted ice, he kills the animals and, exultant, bays at the Moon above him. 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 such equipment failures are happening more and more often. Attempts at repair have failed, and a psionics expert, Jan Cornelius, is brought to the station to evaluate the equipment, although he is aware that Anglesey himself may be the problem.

Anglesey uses a wheelchair. He is bad-tempered, dislikes all his colleagues, and is disliked in return. He is allowed to stay on the station only because of his ability to establish a telepathic connection with and thereby control Joe, a creature designed to survive the hostile conditions on the Jovian surface. Cornelius conjectures that something in Anglesey's mind rejects or fears 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, similar to Joe but lacking a human controller such as Anglesey, has been launched from the satellite and will soon land on Jupiter. Joe, still controlled by Anglesey, is to be the leader, and father, of a new race that will live on the planet. During this session, 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 not Anglesey's fear of going to Jupiter and becoming sublimated into Joe's stronger character which was causing the blowouts, but his fear of leaving Jupiter and the freedom Joe's whole and healthy, though non-human, body allows him. 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, he realizes that Anglesey was very happy to be subsumed into Joe. He speculates that in the future people with similarly damaged bodies, and even the very advanced in age, will be recruited for the Jovian program. Their motivation will be to leave their feeble human bodies behind in favor of new, healthy Jovian flesh and a second life.

Adaptations

A comic book adaptation of Call Me Joe appeared in issue 4 of Starstream, 1976 (script by George Kashdan, art by Adolfo Buylla).[3]

The premise of a paraplegic man whose mind remotely controls an alien body also appears in James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar, similar enough for some critics to have called for Anderson to receive credit.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Call Me Joe title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  2. ↑ For example in Anderson's 1981 collection The Dark Between the Stars and in Jupiter (1973; Ballantine Books), edited by Carol and Frederick Pohl.
  3. ↑ "Starstream #4 (1976)". Retrieved 6 December 2009.
  4. ↑ Davis, Lauren (26 October 2009). "Did James Cameron Rip Off Poul Anderson's Novella?". io9. Retrieved 4 November 2009.
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