Mr. Spaceship

Dick, Philip K. "Mister Spaceship." Imagination Jan. 1953. Frequently collected and legally available on line through Project Gutenberg. Also available as an audiobook, which is our source here.

Long short story or novelette significant generally as an early contribution to the mid-20th-c. debate on whether warfare is primarily a deeply engrained human trait — possibly a literal instinct — or an institution or a very strong and very bad habit. In terms of plot upshot, "Mr. Spaceship" is a "shaggy God" story, specifically significant here for the nature of the "God." See for a minor motif of extending human life by transferring consciousness to complex machinery — the space ship — but more so for the image of that transfer as a brain in a vat in a box in a space ship, with the brain retaining consciousness and seizing control of the ship and, in a sense, control of human destiny. Story alludes specifically to debates over consciousness associated with the name Réne Descartes and explicitly contrasts the electro-mechanical relays of Terran weapon systems with the biologically-based weaponry of their alien opponents; the biologically-based weapons are faster and more flexible, and the human-brain/human-consciousness Mr. Spaceship would be even more effective, except that the story moves to try to raise a variety of humans who will avoid warfare.

RDE 21/I/16