Review of They'd Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton & Frank Riley

There are many patterns observable in human social behavior. One is copy cats. A person needs look no further than Chinese industry to find millions of people beavering away to recreate Western products in an attempt to make a buck. Not being critical, that's just humans being humans. If the situation were reversed, the West would do the same. And the same is, of course, true in writing fiction. One writer makes a big splash on the reading scene and inevitably a line of writers will queue up to do something similar. Published two years after Alfred Bester's successful The Demolished Man, cue Frank Riley and Mark Clifton's They'd Rather Be Right (1954).

They'd Rather Be Right is the story of Joe Carter and the cybernetic brain he and two university professors create. The brain is nicknamed ”Bossy” and is capable of inferring advanced intelligence and immmortality. Naturally, Bossy becomes much sught after for it. So excited, in fact, the government shuts the Bossy project down. Just as naturally, this pushes Bossy underground where its powers can still be utilized. But while there are many people who want the powers Bossy offers, are they willing to give up what Bossy asks in return?

As hinted in the introduction, They'd Rather Be Right possesses a lot of the factors that made The Demolished Man successful. Telepathy, Dick Tracy detective work, and a 1950s silver-spaceship setting. But there is significant departure, also. Riley and Clifton's novel is copy-cat adjacent. Did they try to capture the same zeitgeist, the same visuals? Yes, but each has its own theme and vision.

There are major challenges with They Rather Be Right, but before getting there it's good to luck at where its rubber touches the road. This is primarily in the area of ideas. Bossy waves a carrot in front of humanity—uber intelligence, immortality, who wants them? But there is no such thing as a free lunch. People must give up the idea of subjective correctness, i.e. the idea I can think of my opinion as facts, regardless whether the opinions are indeed empirical or referential. That may not sound like much, but, as Clifton and Riley have latched onto, it is a key part of being human. We're not robots. We sometimes need subjective reality to soothe our weak psyches. I didn't lose the chess match because I made the wrong move. I lost because the lighting was dim. Sounds good, right? Bossy asks people to give up that psychic balm.

But beyond the nice exposure of this fallable facet of being a human, They'd Rather Be Right faces several criticisms. First is pace. It's erratic. Reasonably well-executed action scenes can be followed by lengthy exposition, exposition that heavily blurs the lines between story and author input—navel gazing philosophizing, as it were. But hey, if Frank Herbert can get away with it, why not Riley and Clifton? Another major weakness is the telling not showing. The story's mode too often slips into preaching—a shame considering the legitimacy of theme. And the last challenge the novel creates is plot/story. This arc is minimal, at best. For all the backstory and philosophizing, not much happens story wise. It is the classic science fiction ”novel of ideas” with minimal plot, setting, and character to keep it glued together. It perhaps goes without saying the characters are 1D at best.

Before closing the review, I can't help myself. I must comment on the novel's ”Hugo controversy”.

They'd Rather Be Right won the 1955 Hugo award for Best Sciece Fiction Novel. For the unaware, Hugo winners are voted on by the attendees of the given year's fan convention. It's a popularity award, anyone who attends can vote. But since the novel won the Hugo, some people have opined that it is the worst to ever win. Firstly, tell that to the attendees of the 1955 convention. They would disagree. But secondly, and more importantly, the 'worst Hugo' title has become a meme without substance. Looking at the history of Hugo award winners, there are several books just as mediocre as They'd Rather Be Right, if not worse. Larry Niven's Ringworld, Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves, Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, Ann Leckie's Anciliary Justice, Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids (my vote for worst), and Jo Walton's Among Others are comparable. And that's without getting into wince-inducing list of Hugo nominees. Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes as worthy of the annals of science fiction anyone? Didn't think so.

This is all a long winded way of saying, when popularity determines what is ”best” you have to be prepared to accept the vote. In 1955 the proles liked They'd Rather Be Right, and history was made. So if you're going to criticize anything as 'the worst', criticize Hugo methodology.

In the end, They'd Rather Be Right is a novel that suffers the fate of a lot of science fiction: interesting ideas, mediocre execution. But there are readers for whom style and technique do not matter, meaning this novel about the conflicting interests of the human psyche may be for you. The quandary Clifton and Riley create may be a little heavy handed, but at its core it does propose an interesting question. For people who do care about style and technique, be wary. A proper writer would have cut this work down to novella size and injected a more compelling plot. A poor man's The Demolished Man, I say.