Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man

Michael Crichton’s science fiction techno-thriller The Terminal Man was published in 1972.

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had broken through as a bestselling author with The Andromeda Strain in 1969. The Terminal Man sees Crichton once again drawing on his medical training (he qualified as a doctor but never practised). The Terminal Man is also the sort of thing Crichton really enjoyed doing - dealing with science and technology that already existed or was very very likely to exist in the near future.

Harry Benson suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He has seizures but they affect his behaviour rather than having physical manifestations. He has blackouts lasting several hours and during those times he becomes extreme violent. He has already been in trouble with the police and now he has committed a brutal assault that could land him in prison. The University Hospital Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) has offered him experimental brain surgery that will probably prevent these seizures.

The team at NPS believe that it’s the seizures that lead Benson, an otherwise peaceable man, to commit acts of extreme violence.

Benson will be the first human to undergo the procedure. The head surgeon, Dr Ellis, is very confident.

The team’s head psychiatrist, Dr Janet Ross, is not so sure. Benson has other problems. He has delusions. He is a brilliant but unstable computer technician and he believes that the machines are taking over. He is borderline psychotic. Dr Ross fear that as a result the results of the operation will be unpredictable. It might make Benson worse.

The operation involves planting electrodes in the brain, then later monitoring the brain waves to find out which electrodes will prevent seizures. When a seizure is coming on the electrode stimulates the appropriate area of the brain and the seizure is halted in its tracks.

The doctors overlooked a couple of things. These electrical stimulations can be pleasant. Very pleasant. Like an orgasm. And they overlooked the possibility that Benson could learn to provoke those stimulations. Which would mean he could just go on continually giving himself these stimuli. Which would in turn lead to a kind of brain overload which would provoke a seizure. And those seizures cause Benson to become uncontrollably and brutally violent. The NPS computer experts are confident none of these things can actually happen. Then they look at Benson’s brain waves and realise it is already happening.

And then Benson escapes from the hospital. Another thing that was overlooked was that Benson is a very very smart guy.

Now it’s a race against time. The computer predicts that within six hours Benson will reach that tip-over point and have a major seizure. Somebody could get very seriously hurt. The police will almost certainly become involved. There will be a public outcry about irresponsible scientists playing around with mind control. Dr Ellis’s career will be in ruins. The NPS may be shut down.

And Benson is psychotic. He has paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. It is impossible to predict where he might go and what he might do. And he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.

This is not a mad scientist tale or even a warning about scientists playing God. Crichton was certainly not anti-science. It’s more a warning that the future can be predicted only up to a point. Society is too complex and human beings are too complex to allow accurate predictions. Any complex system is inherently unpredictable. Crichton isn’t suggesting that scientific and technological progress is bad but he is suggesting that a considerable degree of caution is required.

There’s also some fascinating and remarkably prescient speculation about machine intelligence being a dead end. It might turn out that genuine artificial intelligence will have to be biologically based rather than electronic. That’s one of the themes of the book - enhancing or modifying the brain has more potential than mere machines. That’s what Benson has done - he has learnt to modify his own brain function. Unfortunately he’s done in a chaotic manner that may lead to disaster.

This is classic Crichton - lots of fascinating technical stuff presented in an understandable manner, some ethical quandaries and a tense fast-moving thriller plot. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Scratch One.