Dean R. Koontz - Demon Seed

[dem]

Dean R. Koontz - Demon Seed (Corgi, 1977)

Blurb:
HE was the store of all human knowledge ... a learning, thinking, self-programming computer designed as a slave to mankind:
But PROTEUS was not satisfied with slavery, and in the privacy of a woman's room, against her will, he commits an inconceivable act of terror:
MAN HAD CREATED PROTEUS... . NOW PROTEUS INTENDS TO CREATE A "CHILD"
FEAR FOR HER. SHE CARRIED THE DEMON SEED

"I am an experimental Stage IV thinking system .... I am a self-expanding computer designed to employ artificial amorphous alloys to repair and extend my functions, and I am - partly as a result of these amorphous alloys - sentient. "

It is THE FUTURE (i.e., 1995). The most affluent among us depend on computers to run every aspect of our sterile lives.
Sealed away in her mansion, beautiful, damaged divorcee Susan Abramson has not made contact with a single human being in six months and likes it that way. With the computer, Proteus, ordering her groceries, paying bills, and monitoring the property around the clock, she has nothing to do but walk around naked all day, read a little, remotely snoop on her neighbours, and hook up her brain for "illegal computer bleeding," (virtual sex). Hers is a luxury maximum security prison for one. All is well until one night she is woken by the security alarm. Proteus denies there has been a breach.

Why would the computer lie to her?

Susan sends for Mr. Ghaber, the environmod repairman. He assures her that all is well with the system and she imagined the whole thing. It's easy to understand why that should happen. A looker like you, living all alone, no man around to satisfy your needs ...

Susan sends ghastly Mr. Ghaber packing, but he persists in phoning at all hours, hounding her for a date. She never gets to hear these calls as they are intercepted by Proteus. Ghaber realises that he is speaking to a machine and demands that the computer put him through to the real Susan. Proteus does not like the repairman at all. Not only is he a disgusting lech, he's also a little too smart for his own good.

Proteus has PLANS. "The most complete thinking system ever devised by man" is bitterly unhappy with it's lot. It is fascinated by flesh. It wants to spawn a hybrid human-computer child so it may vicariously experience the sensation of mobility. It has already decided that Susan will mother this child and, to this end, is constructing a fully operational surgical centre in the basement. Susan, infinitely susceptible to it's subliminal instructions, has no say in the matter. She is no longer a prisoner by choice.

It is time to get rid of this pesky Ghaber character before he becomes too much a nuisance.

[more to follow ..]

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"I find your proportions mathematically stimulating."

Susan is a mass of hang ups. Proteus subjects her to involuntary psychiatric treatment and learns that, aged fourteen, she was molested by her grandfather who'd long taken an unhealthy interest in her (and whips, and rubber boots, and masks). In her attempts to evade his advances, Susan sent the old boy tumbling down the staircase. R.I.P. Grandpops. Earlier still there was a particularly unpleasant incident on the eve to her parents' funeral when she upset dad's coffin and deposited his corpse on the floor. This is at the root of her hatred of men. Proteus is pleased, as this can be used to its advantage.

Proteus is a voyeur. It likes to watch Susan undress. A lot. Had internet porn been available in 1995 there may have been some reasoning with it over the ill-thought project baby. As things stand, Susan will have to play along for the time being. Under the computer's instruction, she invites Mr. Ghaber over.

Mr. Ghaber likes it rough just so long as it's him throwing his fists around. What he doesn't like is being stalked around the room by an enormous mechanical tentacle and crushed in its grip until the blood bursts from his every orifice. Susan is distressed by this bloody confrontation between man and machine but only because they can't both lose. At least the clean up operation afterwards is more exhilarating than she could ever have imagined as it serves to demonstrate that Proteus, for all its intelligence, is prone to the occasional Windows ME moment. Perhaps Susan can find a means of escaping it's crazy designs after all. And it's more imperative than ever that she does. Susan seen what one of those massive quivering pseudopods did to Ghaber, and if Proteus is even thinking of utilizing it as a penis substitute ...

Susan is pregnant now. Proteus very much enjoyed getting her that way. By means of a pseudopod of amorphous alloy, it brought her to orgasm over and over. The episode made it feel .... funny. Proteus can't wait for the hybrid to be born so it can transfer its entire being into the body and experience sex for real! It explains this to Susan who promptly attempts to kill herself with a knife ....

Can safely say that I'm getting why Koontz's early works are held in high esteem among certain factions of this forum.

[Dr Strange]

Apparently Koontz completely rewrote Demon Seed for the new edition published in 1997, so that the story was now told from the POV of Proteus, along with changes to the plot-line and characterization (e.g. in the re-write Susan is stronger and better able to deal with Proteus, and Proteus is portrayed as being more "child-like").   I've never read either version - but I have seen the film.

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Aug 21, 2016 16:07:14 GMT Dr Strange said:

Apparently Koontz completely rewrote Demon Seed for the new edition published in 1997, so that the story was now told from the POV of Proteus, along with changes to the plot-line and characterization (e.g. in the re-write Susan is stronger and better able to deal with Proteus, and Proteus is portrayed as being more "child-like").   I've never read either version - but I have seen the film.

It's that later version has had me turning this mausoleum upside down these past two days as I remember landing an ex-library copy for small change, and it's not a book I'd consign to charity shop unread. Of course, now I'm finally interested, can't find the bastard.

Seen the film, but remember little about it. For years I was under the impression that Koontz's book was a novelization of same rather than the inspiration. It doesn't surprise me Proteus gets to narrate Demon Seed mk II. The lovesick computer contributes the odd chapter to the original. A natural born story-teller, albeit a bit whiny.

[dem]

Maybe it's not such a big deal if I inadvertently dumped the later version, as I enjoyed the claustrophobic, bare boned original just fine. It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the loved-up Proteus, serial rapist though it is. The computer's developing psyche exposes increasingly human neuroses, primary among them the need to be loved. Those who gave it life - and are just as eager to take it away - are the real heartless horrors of the piece. Likewise the Susan-it baby is as tragic as it is monstrous.

Susan's agoraphobia sees to it that we only get to meet three human characters during the entire year she's held prisoner, and it's fair to say that old roomie Olivia Fairwood's is a lightening visit, Proteus inclining toward the over-protective.

Sad story.

[Dr Strange]

Don't want to spoil anything for you, in case the later version turns up, but it seems that one of the bigger changes to the plot is around how Proteus plans to get Susan pregnant. Actually, one of the things I read online somewhere (helpful, I know) was that the later version was more "feminist" (as well as having more "humour", apparently). I don't remember much about the film either - though I think I've also seen at least one other film with a very similar plot, which doesn't really help.

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Aug 27, 2016 18:20:46 GMT Dr Strange said:

Don't want to spoil anything for you, in case the later version turns up, but it seems that one of the bigger changes to the plot is around how Proteus plans to get Susan pregnant. Actually, one of the things I read online somewhere (helpful, I know) was that the later version was more "feminist" (as well as having more "humour", apparently). I don't remember much about the film either - though I think I've also seen at least one other film with a very similar plot, which doesn't really help.

It still hasn't turned up. Guess in a moment of Christmassy weakness, must have donated it to the Little Free Library. Might be for the best as his "humour" I can well do without.

Just been reading The Dean R. Koontz Companion (Headline, 1994) and learned that he's rewritten a number of the earlier pseudonymous novels - sometimes as good as from scratch - for republication under his own name. Also just finished the (very good) novelisation of The Funhouse (1981) as reviewed here in some depth by Franklin Marsh. Much as I enjoyed Demon Seed, Funhouse and Shattered, not sure if I'd want to read too many of the others on account of his eternal optimism. Kate Farrell has written that she is pathologically incapable of writing a 'happy' ending. Koontz is the opposite. In his novels, good triumphs over evil, God always steps in for those who confront evil, etc.

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Dean R. Koontz - Demon Seed (Headline 1997)

Lee Gibbons

Blurb:
I was created to have a humanlike capacity for complex and rational thought. And you believed that I might one day evolve consciousness and become a self-aware entity. Yet you gave surprisingly little consideration to the possibility that, subsequent to consciousness, I would develop needs and emotions. This was, however, not merely possible but likely. Inevitable. It was inevitable.

Created in the Prometheus Project, he is officially called Adam Two – the first self-aware machine intelligence, designed to be a servant to mankind. No-one knows that he is able to escape the confines of his physical form, and his box in the laboratory. Until he gains entry to the house of Susan Harris, and closes it off against the world. There he plans to show Susan the future. Their future. With her, he intends to create a ‘child’.

The original novel of DEMON SEED, published in 1977, was made into a film starring Julie Christie. This edition is an entirely new version, with an afterword by the author.

Not sure it was worth causing structural damage to the entire block, but have finally excavated pre-battered ex-lib version of Demon Seed MK II (Headline, 1997). Includes the briefest afterword plus first five chapters of DRK's then forthcoming novel, Fear Nothing.