M. I. Mayfield 14 min read

A letter to a scientific journal, from a correspondent grappling with the deep question of how a computing machine truly compares to the living human brain, and what one such comparison reveals.

M. I. Mayfield's 1957 story, told as a letter, is a clever hard-SF and social-SF tale of computers and minds. Sharp, cerebral golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an academic inquiry into brains and machines conceals, by careful omission, something startling.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

14 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas