The Adolescence of P-1

by Thomas J. Ryan

Born to a rather beserk, if brilliant, programmer, a computer program has managed to escape its home computer, infiltrate others, and reach adolescence when the Pentagon finally realizes that something is upsetting their secret computer data

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, Classics, Computers, Cyberpunk, Fantasy

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Thomas Joseph Ryan, born 1942, is a Canadian author.

Ryan moved into the USA and worked as a computer troubleshooter. Living in Garden Grove, California in 1977 he wrote his most known work, the science fiction novel The Adolescence of P-1. The story is one of the earliest fictional depictions of a computer virus and how it intelligently can spread through a computer network.

Reviews

[Feliks · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Dated' is not a valid criticism for this book. If unexpected jumps in mass-produced home computer technology make some of the terminology in this thriller seem quaint; that's not the fault of the author; its the fault of the audience. Please don't compare your stupid XBOX home-gaming station, to an actual computer (like the infamous Cray or the Univac). This novel was a fine example of pre-Microsoft fiction surrounding the as-yet unexplored territory of computers and what havoc they might be capable of wreaking, if given enough power over us. Other books and movies which explored this theme? There are many great examples: 'Colossus: The Forbin Project', "Fail-Safe", "Demon Seed" and Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey". So please, do not turn up your nose. This clever little techno-adventure was perfectly decent for its time and --if you have any imagination at all--still is. "The Adolescence of P-1" is actually one of my favorite 'obscure sleeper' SF novels ever. It is rich in personality, humor, and action; and the childlike computer 'P-1' itself is one of the most memorable computer characters conceived. I would re-read this book at any opportunity--and do so, with relish.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, let me say that I last read this in a pirated e-copy. Somewhere, I lost my paperback copy, and it's out of print, and the only way I could re-read it was to download an illegal copy from the net.

So sue me! Tom Ryan, if you contact me, I'll send you twice your legitimate royalty payment. And the epub I downloaded, which is MUCH better formatted than most books of a similar vintage that I get from legitimate publishing houses. It was a labour of love for somebody, while most of the traditional publishers who put out e-copies of backlists put no effort into it at all.

So, to the story. This is an extremely flawed book. For the technical reasons, see Rob Sawyer's review. There's a lot of hand-waving about how a computer actually achieves consciousness. On a more personal level, having been at the University of Waterloo just shortly after the events set there, I'm ticked that he sets UW in Kitchener (an adjacent city) and clearly knows nothing about the area (though I'd say he was in the Math faculty computer center)—London is not six miles south of Kitchener, that would be Cambridge (or maybe, at the time, Preston). London is more like 60 miles west.

On the other hand, there are moments that are sublime. When Burgess is first talking about hacking an IBM mainframe, his roommate says it can't be done.

"Have you ever tried?" Gregory asked
"No. And I don't have to try to know that I can't fly without an airplane."

That's brilliant, as it reflects the belief, less than a century earlier, that heavier-than-air flight was equally impossible.

Sawyer's own books about emerging consciousness in a networked computer (WWW: Wake & sequels) are technically better, but this tale is absolutely seminal! For all its faults, it's the progenitor of the computer-gains-consciousness-takes-control-of-the world genre. Other authors had had intelligent computers, but Ryan was the one who actually tried to explain how it could happen (he was wrong, but at least he tried!). Programming an AI is far more difficult than Ryan would have us believe (which is why there still isn't one, 40 years later), but at the time of writing it sounded believable. I suspect Ryan never got as far in Computer Science as Moore's Law, because he just doesn't think nearly big enough. P-1 is planning a new crystalline storage medium that can contain 4 billion "addresses" in a 150mm x 400mm cylinder. Even assuming an address points to a 64-bit word, that would only be 256GB of memory. In something that's actually much larger than my current laptop, which in one tiny portion of the entire machine has a terabyte hard drive.

But even knowing how badly he got some things wrong, and cringing at his American understanding of Canadian geography, the scope of his vision, and the things he got right make this utterly compelling. And he leaves us completely hanging! These days (or even a few years earlier with Colossus) there'd be a trilogy. A must read!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book far more than it probably deserves.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although dated in terms of technology, the author got several things right when speculating about the (then) future. Considering this predates Cyberpunk, War Games, Tron, The Matrix and all the other now-standard computer/A.I. standards, it's a very imaginative story filled with plenty of "insider" techie bits to satisfy the inner geek, even if the science isn't perfect. I wish I'd been able to find this when it first came out, and I wonder how reading it would have changed my thinking on a lot of things. I definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys technology-based fiction, particularly A.I. intrigue.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first time I read this, I was an aimless high school student and a voracious reader. While I remembered it fondly, if vaguely, I hadn't realized how much of an effect it had on me and my a career. I've never referred to it when explaining why I choose to work with computers.

One of the turning points early in the book occurs when Gregory writes a program that learns to play tic-tac-toe. I wrote that program, too, as part of my studies at RPI and I remember being amazed when the program I had written -- which started with the rules of the game but no strategy -- beat me after just a few learning rounds! It reinforced my belief that computers were the next best thing to magic.

The book was written in 1977 and takes place in the previous few years (starting in 1974). While I'm not a computer historian and don't know the 1970s' state of the art in computing, I think it holds up fairly well. This book is only the second literary reference to something like a computer virus and may be the first reference to what we'd now call genetic programming.

It's cheesy in places and somewhat dated but I enjoyed it every bit as much now as I did in the 70s.

[Alan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book first around 1980. We still had teletype terminals in my high school at that time. This tale of artificial inteligence fit the technology of the day to a tee. It explores elements of fear and trust in the growing super-inteligence that it not emotionally developed. I've read it many times since.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book years ago and the recent competition on Jeopardy with "Watson" reminded me of it. I remember being intrigued by the idea of a computer being programmed to link with other computers to soak up as much knowledge as possible. It then runs amuk. Lots of fun.

[Stephen Soliday]

I am the subject matter expert in Machine Learning and Cyber Autonomy for L3 Technologies Advanced Programs. This is the book that sent me down that career path. I read it in 1980 when I was in high school. Over the decades I have re-read this book many times and I enjoy it every time.

[Russ Cage · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the seminal works of its genre, along with "When Harley Was One" and "The Shockwave Rider". The IBM mainframes and everything else are hopelessly dated today, but the story of an AI which comes to life and to the attention of forces which find it threatening is never going to go stale. You can trace this along to much modern SF and also comedy such as "Short Circuit".

People who need trigger warnings should NOT read this, or any book with a sad ending. Then again, they should probably stay in padded rooms for protection against badfeelz. If you feel like doing it Greek style with two tragedies and a comedy, I suggest reading this, "When Harley Was One" and "Shockwave Rider" (not a comedy, but uplifting) in sequence.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very entertaining, thought provoking and well before it's time. I enjoyed it immensely!

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

My sister gave me a copy of this book for my 15th birthday in August 1977. Having a nascent interest in computers—such as they were at the time—I read it with great interest. I didn't understand a lot of the technical explanations (more on that in a bit) but I enjoyed the plot and, especially, the descriptions of the main protagonist's attractive, smart, and willing girlfriend/wife. Then I put the book on my shelf, where it has amazingly remained for 45 years, through all the moves and downsizings and upheavals of life. I had mostly forgotten about it until a recent mention of it by someone in a Disqus comment thread on an article about the LaMDA AI story. (For those of you reading this review in the far future, you can learn more here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google....) This inspired me to blow the dust off my copy and give it another read.

First and foremost, this book is technoporn. Specifically, mid-1970s computer and telecommunications porn. It gets deep into the weeds of some programming and operating systems concepts, telephone network switching schemes, all that stuff. That's why I didn't understand a lot of it as a 15 year old, even as nerdy as I was at the time. I suspect that on some level this book is one of the influences that led me to eventually become a software engineer and designer, but the influence wasn't obvious at the time because so many of the descriptions in the story were over my head. But as I read it now, not only do the author's premises usually make a degree of sense (while making some leaps of assumption that are clear to me now), they are actually entertaining. Most entertaining of all, though, is the notion that while here we are in 2022 still struggling to build a neural network that can support a learning machine's becoming a true artificial intelligence, the main character in this book does it with hardware that has far less memory and computing power than my antiquated iPhone 6.

I like how the AI in the story, P-1, has a personality that is an extrapolation of the two basic motivations that were written into the very small program that was it's genesis: collect as many resources as you can, and stay hidden in order to avoid destruction. These motivations make the more evolved, "adolescent" P-1 haughty, aggressive, and paranoid. This consistency adds an air of believability to an otherwise amusing premise. There is also a note of the "why am I here?" question that would be asked by V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture just two years later.

If I have a complaint, it's that there are too many characters to keep track of in such a small (< 300 pages) book—military officers, office workers, programmers, etc. But if you use the trick of keeping track of character names and descriptions on a separate piece of paper as you read, you can overcome this.

While I quite enjoyed the re-read of this book, I found the very end of the story feeling a little rushed and unsatisfying; P-1's decision in the last couple of pages seemed inconsistent with its stated purpose of just a page or two previously. Then I read the Epilogue, and it all made sense. So even though the tech in this story is fairly dated now, the concepts are sound. Spare some forbearance for the author (a self-described "computer troubleshooter" of 1977 vintage) wanting to show off his detailed knowledge and go with the flow of the story, and I think you will find this book an enjoyable read if you are at all technically inclined.

[David Wasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It isn't well-known, even among the IT community, but I found this eye-opening and disturbing when I read it. Later, in the 1980s, after seeing the film War Games, I realized there were a lot of similarities to this story, even though nobody seems to recognize/admit this, nor credit Thomas J. Ryan for his contribution. Oh, well. That's Hollywood I guess.

The technology is, of course, dated. But if you could send yourself back to the 1970s you would also be impressed. Highly recommended (if you can find a copy).

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story; fun to read and fun to cheer for the newly sentient AI trying to defend itself from humanity. But why would a networked AI ever have to consolidate itself in any one location? it wouldn't! This story has everything... I forget if it has/had a movie... I need to look; nope!

I first read this book when it came out in 1977 and it influenced my thinking on sentience and consciousness.

[Barac Wiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this one a few times. It's not the world's best technothriller or anything, but it's well enough told, and it's fascinating today because it's a now familiar story (the emergence of an AI) told in an era whose computing technology has become nearly unimaginably primitive to a modern reader.

[Earl Truss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem to remember reading a short story by this title many years ago. This was not the same story. This was a story about a program that a student wrote to acquire computers to use for himself. Magic happens and the computer becomes alive and sentient and attempts to take over the world. Eventually the government kills everybody.

[Bobby Jo Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read this the first time as a teenager (in the late 70's), I really liked it. Back then I knew nothing of computers. Now I know a tiny bit about computers, having spent a career programming and swearing at them, and I couldn't enjoy the story as much. It hasn't aged well.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this years (and years) ago and remember really liking it.

[Cheryl]

Feliks liked it, and another reviewer says it's "what if."

[The_J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rocking tale of Artificial Intelligence, before AI was cool. How a rogue piece of programming can learn in the world, and the friends that track along, and sacrifice with/for him.

[D J Rout · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the two great novels about sentient computer programs, the other being Valentina: Soul in Sapphire. The tech is a little dated by now, and not much effort is made to give P-1 a personality, yet I woudl still compare 'him' favourably with Valentina and Steveland from Semiosis and Interference. Non-human intelligences are hard to pull off, but Thomas J Ryan has managed it.

One of the characters, John Burke, is a forerunner of the fiercely intelligent, very competnet spy you se in so much cyberpunk these days.

On the plus side the book is completeluy free of postmodern bullshit. A story told from beginning to end, albeit with a flashback, is a rarte and pleasant thing these days, although it was more common when the book was written.

Still worth four stars.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of a computer gaining intelligence and control of the world's networks is still viable today. I also really appreciated the depth of the descriptions behind the 1970s mainframe technology. It was a little hard to follow at times due to the foreign terms (e.g. referring to mainframe computers by number like 360/50), but you could tell he was trying to explain his daytime profession to the layperson. As for the characters, P-1 is the most well-developed and he's a paranoid computer program. The military types are nearly all interchangeable, death only serving to further the plot. And the Burgesses are purely unbelievable. Unless something has drastically changed since the 1970s, renegade computer programmers are not incredible sex machines who entice many gorgeous long-legged dingbats between bouts of coding. It's just not plausible. But not an entirely bad read if you can get past the 1970s machismo.

[Nicholas George · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was marginally interesting to read this nearly 40-year-old novel about a large networked computer gaining a sense of self and wanting to take over the world like a big spoiled child. But the preponderance of 1970s tech-speak was painful to wade through, and the characters were completely one-dimensional. (Plus, it had all been done eight years earlier in the film "Colossus: The Forbin Project"). In 2014 such a scenario is still frighteningly possible, but not in the predictable, bland way depicted here.

[J. Andre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this circa 1983 when I was a new military "teletype/cypher" tech.

I picked it up off the shared-book shelf at the barracks when we were on the road doing routine maintenance. Everyone else went out for beers (Friday night) but I stayed in and read the book through in one sitting. It's come back to mind many times over the years and today I plugged it in to Google...I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people remember it as fondly as I do.

I'll have to search the used book stores for it now.

[Sean Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read, as all the technology was so dated it felt like going back in time. Of course, the story itself isn’t spectacular nowadays, but I enjoyed it for the historical angle if nothing else.

[Aalok Wyckid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know of two good 'computer become sentience' stories. This is one and the other in 'When Harlie Was One.' I read this first when it was published in the 70's and it does show it's age. I think Harlie stands the test of time better, but it's been a while since I read it.

[Fredric Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this decades ago, it is surprisingly good! This was back in the day when the IBM370 was the fastest, best computer that civilians could work with. :) It's a bit dated but it scales up well to today's fantasy fiction verging upon real science fiction.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent read, but definately dated. It was written in the late 1970s tech level.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still worth a read even if the technology is outdated.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I no longer have a copy of this great novel about artificial intelligence. I'm terribly dated now but still fascinating investigation into the development of a confused young mind.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Available on-line at http://vxheavens.com/lib/mtr00.html