Home Is the Hangman

'''Zelazny, Roger. "Home Is the Hangman."' Analog'' Nov. 1975. Coll. My Name Is Legion. New York: Ballantine, 1976. Also coll. Unicorn Variations. (c) 1983. New York: Timescape-Pocket, n. d. [S. F.] Book Club Edition.

"A combination of telefactor and computer, yet more than the sum of the two, the Hangman is a unique, anthropomorphic machine sent from Earth to explore the solar system" (C. Yoke in TMG[]; see also Yoke, Roger Zelazny, under Literary Criticism; and see RZ's "Force That Through the Circuit"). Note also America of "HIH" under fairly rigid control by the Central Data Bank and its computers, and the musings of the protagonist-narrator on mechanism, vitalism, and the favoring of "mechanical metaphors for the state" by leftists vs. "vegetable analogies" favored by conservatives (Unicorn Variations, 118 of Book Club edn.).