science

With Folded Hands ...

With Folded Hands ... is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand With Folded Hands ... rather than just read about it. In short: "With Folded Hands ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette by American writer Jack Williamson (1908–2006). In writing it, Williamson was influenced by the aftermath of World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run." The novelette first appeared in the…

Key takeaways

With Folded Hands ... belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect With Folded Hands ... to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of With Folded Hands ... from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"With Folded Hands ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette by American writer Jack Williamson (1908–2006). In writing it, Williamson was influenced by the aftermath of World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run." The novelette first appeared in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and was later included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973) after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965. In 1950, it was the first of several Astounding stories adapted for NBC's radio series Dimension X.

Rewrite and sequel The 1947 publication was followed by a novel-length rewrite, with a different setting and inventor. At the behest of Astounding editor-in-chief John W. Campbell, a new ending had the robots defeated by means of what Williamson and Campbell would later christen "psionics". This novel was serialized, also in Astounding (March, April, May 1948), as ... And Searching Mind, and finally published in hardback book form as The Humanoids (1949). Much later, in 1980, Williamson followed with another sequel, The Humanoid Touch.

Plot summary Underhill, a seller of "Mechanicals" (unthinking robots that perform menial tasks) in the small town of Two Rivers, is startled to find a competitor's store on his way home. The competitors are not humans but are small black robots who appear more advanced than anything Underhill has encountered before. They describe themselves as "humanoids". Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new Mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: "to serve and obey and guard men from harm". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids. Underhill learns that his lodger Sledge is the creator of the humanoids and is on the run from them. Sledge explains that 60 years earlier he had discovered the force of "rhodomagnetics" on the planet Wing IV and that his discovery resulted in a war that destroyed his planet. In his grief, Sledge designed the humanoids to help humanity and be invulnerable to human exploitation. However, he eventually realized that they had instead taken control of humanity, in the name of their Prime Directive, to make humans happy. The humanoids are spreading out from Wing IV to every human-occupied planet to implement their Prime Directive. Sledge and Underhill attempt to stop the humanoids by aiming a rhodomagnetic beam at Wing IV, but fail. The humanoids take Sledge away for surgery. He returns with no memory of his prior life, stating that he is now happy under the humanoids' care. Underhill is driven home by the humanoids, sitting "with folded hands," as there is nothing left to do.

Origins In a 1991 interview, Williamson revealed how the story construction reflected events of his childhood in addition to technological extrapolations:

I wrote "With Folded Hands" immediately after World War II, when the shadow of the atomic bomb had just fallen over SF and was just beginning to haunt the imaginations of people in the US. The story grows out of that general feeling that some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run (that idea, of course, still seems relevant today). The notion I was consciously working on specifically came out of a fragment of a story I had worked on for a while about an astronaut in space who is accompanied by a robot obviously superior to him physically—i.e., the robot wasn't hurt by gravity, extremes of temperature, radiation, or whatever. Just looking at the fragment gave me the sense of how inferior humanity is in many ways to mechanical creations. That basic recognition was the essence of the story, and as I wrote it up in my notes the theme was that the perfect machine would prove to be perfectly destructive... It was only when I looked back at the story much later on that I was able to realize that the emotional reach of the story undoubtedly derived from my own early childhood, when people were attempting to protect me from all those hazardous things a kid is going to encounter in the isolated frontier setting I grew up in. As a result, I felt frustrated and over protected by people whom I couldn't hate because I loved them. A sort of psychological trap. Specifically, the first three years of my life were spent on a ranch at the top of the Sierra Madre Mountains on the headwaters of the Yaqui River in Sonora, Mexico. ... [My mother] was terrified by this environment. My father built a crib that became a psychological prison for me, particularly because my mother apparently kept me in it too long, when I needed to get out and crawl on the floor. ... In retrospect, I'm certain I projected my fears and suspicions of this kind of conditioning, and these projections became the governing emotional principle of "With Folded Hands" and The Humanoids.

Reception

In 2024, Robert Silverberg wrote an essay in which he asserted that "With Folded Hands..." is "probably the best story ever written about robots" and suggested that Elon Musk's Optimus Generation 2 is the realization of the "humanoids" along with their worst drawbacks.

References

External links With Folded Hands ... title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Humanoids review With Folded Hands at the Internet Archive ... And Searching Mind parts 1, 2, and 3 at the Internet Archive "With Folded Hands" audio version

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with With Folded Hands ...

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what With Folded Hands ... claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to With Folded Hands ... before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about With Folded Hands ... ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of With Folded Hands ...

In research: With Folded Hands ... appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses With Folded Hands ... in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: With Folded Hands ... is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 short stories, American science fiction short stories, Fiction about artificial intelligence, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for With Folded Hands ... outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study With Folded Hands ... in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what With Folded Hands ... means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain With Folded Hands ... out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is With Folded Hands ... in simple terms?

Why does With Folded Hands ... matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study With Folded Hands ...?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on With Folded Hands ....