LETO II, THX-1138, LOGAN 5, AND 3JANE: Numbers in Names in Science Fiction

Mathematical concepts and number signs have become almost intrinsic to the science fiction genre. Classic novels such as Edwin Abbott's Flatland (1884) and H.G. Wells' Time Machine (1895), for example, use mathematical concepts in order to suggest the existence of a higher power or propel us through the "fourth dimension." Additionally, the science fiction penchant for using variable symbols (especially letters of the Greek alphabet) is not a terribly recent development, as evidenced by Aldous Huxley's use of them to designate stations of class in Brave New World in 1932.

In more recent works of science fiction, Roman and Arabic numerals have become wedded to or embedded within the names of key protagonists. Characters such as R2D2 in Lucas' Star Wars saga and the Lady 3Jane in Gibson's Neuromancer bear such names--names that are comprised of two systems of signs, a collision of letters and digits. Such names appear visually and sonically striking on the printed page or movie screen, presenting the reader or viewer with the puzzling feeling of reading a mixed message.

In such cases, numbers in names represent not only the old notion of arithmos tinos, since the name is a signifier that identifies a particular and real-world signified (an individual entity), but also Viete's system of symbolic substitution, a system that expresses signs as variables in relation to other numbers. Additionally, such names exist as codes to be decrypted in the context of the "real" world, a world that serves to create and contain them.

LETO II, SHADDAM IV, AND ELROOD IX: ROMAN NUMERALS AND DYNASTIC SUCCESSION IN DUNE

In Frank Herbert's Dune series, character names with Roman numeral suffixes appear in plenty. Shaddam IV, Leto II, and Elrood IX, for example, share textual space with the more familiar "Paul," "Jessica," and "Duncan." The novel takes place after the so-called Butlerian Jihad, a

Such a commandment creates an old-fashioned--if not antiquated--society, complete with aristocratic rule and rigid gender roles. Mentats, for example, are human (male) calculators responsible for retaining complex formulae required for space travel. The Bene Gesserit, on the other hand, are females with extraordinary neural-sensory bodily control. At the head of both schools, Mentat and Bene Gesserit, the Padishah Emperor governs from the lion throne. He is Shaddam IV, the emperor of the "known universe."

Before Shaddam IV there was Elrood IX, his father. And after Shaddam IV there is Leto II, the son of Paul Atreides. Such Roman numerals imply dynastic succession, since there could be no Shaddam IV without Shadamms I, II, and III--no Elrood IX without eight priors. Yet characters with such suffixes attached to their names are always members of the ruling elite. While Roman numerals are traditionally used to imply dynastic lines of succession (e.g. Elizabeth II, Richard III, Cleopatra VII etc.), on the world of Arrakis, such numbers also reflect a tension regarding technical progression--a tension, as it turns out, that is rooted in Victorian anxiety regarding Darwinism and technology.

In 1863 Samuel Butler wrote an essay entitled "Darwin Among the Machines," a work that has been appropriated to discuss the negative potential of Artificial Intelligence. "The machines," Butler states,

One hundred and two years after these assertions, Frank Herbert published Dune (1965), the first in a series of six books devoted to the exploration of a desert planet in the far-flung future. Besides providing a commentary on Mid-Eastern and Western relations, speculations about the future role of women, and metaphors for oil and OPEC in the forms of spice and CHOAM, Herbert's Dune reiterates the fears and tensions expressed in Butler's "Darwin Among the Machines."

Another expression of this tension would come three years later, in 1968, with Kubrick's HAL-9000 in 2001. Yet, whereas Kubrick's tension plays out in a face-to-interface confrontation between human being and thinking machine, and one that occurs as a part of human evolution, Herbert's tension proves more reactionary.

Herbert does not have man merely confront the machines--Herbert's characters instead annihilate them. Destruction in the form of the Butlerian jihad does not occur within the linear narrative of the text, but as an appendix, a paragraph of back-story to explain the lack of the digital. Additionally, by using characters with names that evoke periods of dynastic succession, such as Shaddam IV; antiquity, as Leto II of the house Atreides; and the Roman numeral in favor of the Arabic number sign, Herbert's world of Arrakis reveals the cultural tension regarding computer evolution. Such numbers reject new technology and anchor us in the past, even as the story pretends to be about the future.

Such a tension between old and new is not surprising in terms of the emerging technology and media theory of Herbert's time. In 1959, for example, Jack St. Clair Kilby invented the first microchip. This device, no larger than a thumbnail, revolutionized technology, creating the "fourth generation" of computers. (MIT) Additionally, around this time Marshall McLuhan published The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), a text that makes rather bold statements regarding the role of technology in human evolution:

We are only kidding ourselves, McLuhan suggests, if we do not already recognize that such a fusion between flesh and technology exists.

Herbert, writing in reaction to such advances in technology as Kilby's microchip and such provocative statements by media theorists like McLuhan, has used numbers in names to anchor us to the past, evoking an era in which dynastic succession kept the human race in line for thousands of years.

Interestingly enough, the Roman numeral suffixes in the names of Dune's ruling elite also reflect the serial nature of Herbert's own books, which have, like his characters, become examples of dynastic succession. Comprised of six books ranging in publication dates from Dune in 1965 to Chapterhouse: Dune in 1985, the world of Arrakis has continued to flourish in varying forms of succession since Herbert's death in 1986. Hollywood adaptations, such as David Lynch's attempt in 1984, John Harrison's made-for-television-movie in 2000, and a mini-series, Children of Dune--currently in production--surface randomly like the majestic shai-halud from the desert.

Additionally, Herbert's son Brian has written House Atreides (1999), House Harkonnen (2000), and House Corrino (2001), three "prequels" to the Dune saga.(1) Although he received help from Kevin Anderson, it is Brian's name that has been hyped, marketed, and displayed beside his father's in bookstores. Brian has become "Herbert II" and, like Shaddam IV in the original novel, has inherited privilege based on dynastic succession.

Thus the Roman numeral suffixes of the characters in Herbert's Dune series serve various functions. They have somewhat ironically evolved to reflect the serial nature of Herbert's own series, since his fictional world has continued to thrive in various incarnations since his death. Additionally, they serve to root us in the past, recalling antiquity and dynastic succession. Finally, by evoking the past, such names reflect a cultural fear regarding new technology and dehumanization in Herbert's own time period.

THX-1138, LUH-3417, C-3PO, AND R2D2: GEORGE LUCAS' MECHANICAL MEN

In THX-1138, George Lucas' first feature-length film, the mixture of letters and numbers in the name of the title character reflects a similar distrust of mechanization. In this film, however, such names also create hybrid identities--people whose names are expressions of the forces that surround and shape them. Although a proper name is a signifier that can represent one person at one place at one time, it can also represent the external forces at work upon the name-bearer. As Gilles Deleuze writes in A Thousand Plateaus:

If not a multiplicity, the numbers and letters that constitute the name THX-1138 at least reflect the conflicts that plague this man. He is an individual, yet he is subject to the laws of the state. He loves, but the limits of his love are state-prescribed. He is a human being, but his habits are controlled by mechanism, even as he works to build more machines. In short, as the mixed message of his name suggests, THX-1138 exists as a hybrid being.

As a "Magnum Manipulator," THX-1138 operates machinery in order to create the chrome men who, in turn, act as police officers and control him. It is here, commanded to work under the influence of various, state-prescribed narcotics, that we see numbers at play, when THX is addressed by his complete name, letter by letter, and digit by digit:

CONTROL VOICE:

When he is outside of work, however, his roommate LUH-3417 abbreviates his name to THX, and pronounces it "Thex," adding the vowel sound to make the letters form a syllable. Both characters use such abbreviations during declarations of love or passion, avoiding the number signs completely:

Similarly, THX address LUH-3417 as "Luh," pronouncing her name so the "U" has the same vowel sound as it does in the word "lull." Here the letters represent the human aspect to the characters' identity, and the characters eschew the number in favor of the letter, avoiding the second halves of their names.

THX's love for LUH is fierce, yet when his passions and frustrations threaten to overwhelm him, he bends to the commands of the state and seeks the counsel of OMM, the state-sanctioned "God," who, in a monotonous voice, assures him:

OMM:

OMM works to both soothe the man and bolster the worker, appealing to THX's conflicting roles.

Virtually every flesh-and-blood character in the film exists as a split being, expressed clearly by the hybrid names they bear. The letters, as evidenced by the mode of address used by humans, represent the human half of the working hybrid. The numbers, spoken by the cold and mechanical voice of the state, are used to quantify and keep track of productivity. The numbers, then, act as mechanical and dehumanizing agents. (2)

Although THX-1138 manages to flee the state-controlled architecture that contains him, the process of his dehumanization does not end with the film's close. Similar to the characters in Dune, who continue to live in the sequel-prequels penned by Herbert II, THX-1138 continues to endure outside of the original work that contained him. Should you decide to view virtually any first-run film in the United States, you will see him--not as the brooding and rebellious Robert Duvall who escapes corporate enslavement in the 1970 film, but as a disembodied name and corporate icon for Lucas' sound system: THX.

The 1138 portion of the name has been dropped, and the THX exists as a disembodied graphic, no longer related to the character it once identified. Here, in silver-hued letters, THX has become like the chrome men he once assembled and fought against in Lucas' first film. Additionally, in certain ads for THX sound system, the icon starts out as liquid metal before coalescing into clean lines of text, evoking the silvery blobs that merged to form Robert Patrick as the T-1000 in James Cameron's T2--a dehumanized machine if there ever was one.

Such a dehumanized name holds an interesting position in relation to Lucas' later work, standing in opposition to the numbers in the names of his two famous and bumbling robots: C-3PO and R2D2 in the Star Wars saga. If in THX-1138 numbers are used to present men as victims of mechanization, the inverse is true in Star Wars. Whereas the character THX-1138 is brooding, miserable, and addicted to drugs, C-3P0 and R2D2 play off each other like Felix and Oscar, a metallic and mechanical odd couple.

Both robots provide comic relief throughout the saga-- C-3PO with his constant complaining and R2D2 with his clicks and whirrs and blinking lights. Lucas' "droids" have become so familiar that their names are often abbreviated affectionately to "R2" or "3PO." With this sort of nicknaming, such robots become harmless anthropomorphic entities that exist only for the service of humanity.

Yet C-3P0 and R2D2 are robots. They can be dismantled, lasered, and even decollated--as the Attack of the Clones reveals. In this latest offering, C-3PO is decapitated, fused to an enemy droid, and decapitated again, before R2 pulls his head away from the melee, across the coarse sand of the arena. "What a drag," C-3PO quips as he is being dragged. And, once positioned beside his copper body, states, "I'm feeling rather beside myself." The jokes are atrocious, but the function is clear: the droids offer comic relief, reiterating the plot's single-minded purpose and providing assurance that the rebels will prevail over the evil empire.

Their names, however, while comprised of letters and numbers, do not form the same conflicted identity that so troubles THX. This is because they are men of metal, lacking any sort of human frailty or self-doubt about their function in life or the purpose of their existence. These robots know who they are, never doubting their class or function. Thus the robots' names, while existing as a collision of two sign systems, do not reflect the hybrid nature as they do with THX. (3)

Where do such entities stand in relation to the characters of Dune, with their Roman numeral suffixes, dynastic lines of succession, and rejection of thinking machines? In the characters of R2D2 and C-3PO, there is no tension between human being and outside agency--no fear of mechanization. Instead, the robots are presented as completely subservient to human desires. They do not possess dual natures. They are instead, static, unchanging, and comfortingly predictable.

THX-1138, on the other hand, reflects Herbert's suspicion of the "thinking machine." Here, in a dystopian society, man serves machines, or at least is a victim of a mechanized society; and such a film could very well be an episode leading up to Herbert's idea of the Butlerian Jihad and its complete rejection of computers in favor of human potential.

LOGAN 5 AND JESSICA 6: NUMBERS AS EXPIRATION DATES IN LOGAN'S RUN

In the first scene of Logan's Run, the Sandman Logan 5 stands before a glass enclosure. Within it, nested on pink temperfoam, the clone Logan 6 sucks his thumb in post-natal bliss. A small jewel the size of a quarter blinks within the chubby palm of his infant hand. Logan 5 raises his own hand, similarly bejeweled, and salutes his future self. He watches Logan 6 fondly, possessively, and narcissistically.

Similar to the progression of dynastic succession in Dune, the numbers in names here indicate the progression of one type of entity. Logan 5 is a Sandman, one of the elite few chosen to hunt down "runners," people approaching the age of thirty who defy the "fiery process of carrousel." Logan 6 represents the next entity in this line of Logans, and will take Logan 5's place once he dies. Since Logan 5 is approaching the age of thirty, this will happen quite soon. As Logan gazes at Logan 6, he expresses his desire that his "progeny" follow in his footsteps:

Yet while numbers act initially in the same manner as the Roman suffixes of Dune, implying a line of succession, they also suggest both a fear of facsimile and act as "expiration dates" for human life throughout the film.

In THX-1138 the numbers are dehumanizing agents, and the characters in the film address each other only by their lettered prefixes. Similarly, in Logan's Run, the characters refer to each other by their lettered names. Here the number is also dehumanizing, not because the characters must work like machines for the state, but because the state has determined that their human life span be limited to thirty years.

At the close of the thirty-year span, a new clone is conceived and birthed by a "seed mother." Yet, even though the birth of the next clone is the only hope of longevity or immortality that the society provides, the birth of a such an entity marks the approaching death of the "old." In this way numbers in names as life limiters, and the life span of the character is built into the character's name. Thus, when Logan 6 is born, Logan 5 confronts his own mortality.

The number in Logan's name, like the Roman numeral suffixes that follow that names of the characters in Dune, comes after the name, a secondary characteristic that, like the numbers that follow the letters "THX," serve to create a character's split identity. Thus Logan is half his own person (Logan), yet exists in a continuum outside the boundaries of his own life (5). And, since Logan is a clone, he also exists as a facsimile of some original being who has died four generations prior, his identity dependent upon the Logans who came before him. The name brands him as one among a line of many, undermining the notion of individuality.

Such a concern regarding individuality is not surprising in the context of the time. Although Logan's Run came out in 1976, two years before the first successful "test tube baby" was successfully delivered in England, the tension regarding such technological advances was increasingly mounting. As James D. Watson wrote in a 1971 essay in the popular magazine The Atlantic Monthly:

Logan's Run, then, in addition to using numbered names to express a split identity, uses them in reaction to such advances in technology as Gurdon's "clonal frog" and the progresses in in-vitro fertilization. Thus the number here expresses a fear of reproduction, an almost fetishistic belief that something will lose its essence through facsimile.

3JANE, 8JEAN, AND 3JANE@AOL.COM: DUAL IDENTITIES AND NEUROMANCER

Like Logan 5, the Lady 3Jane in Gibson's Neuromancer is a product of genetic cloning. While Logan 5 has a textual space between his name and the number, however--a space that serves to affirm the gap that exists between his individual identity and the Logan type--3Jane's name is a true collision of letter and number. And, for the first time within the texts mentioned here, the number precedes the letter of the name within the line of text.

This positioning achieves two functions. First, it sets up 3Jane as a dual figure in the same manner as it does to Logan 5, since 3Jane's individual identity is positioned in relationship to the other Janes that came before her. Additionally, the number in her name reflects a trend towards dual identity that pervades the entire novel. Every character in Neuromancer bears at least two names. Case, for example, is addressed as Case, Henry Dorsett Case, Lupus, and "Artiste." Molly, the silver-eyed assassin who recruits Case for the Straylight run, is known throughout Gibson's work as Molly Millions, Sally Shears, and Rose Kolodny. McCoy Pauly is the Dixie Flatline; Armitage is Corto; Wintermute speaks through the Finn, etc. Beyond these names, too, exists the symbolic meaning behind each: Case, e.g., starts out as hollow and empty as the shell of his name suggests. Molly Millions and Sally Shears identify Molly as money and muscle, which she both pursues and exhibits.

Such character names come out of necessity. All of the above-mentioned characters engage in nefarious and criminal activity and have much to gain by disguising their identities--Case, for example, switches to "Lupus" when he wants to buy drugs. Whereas such dual identities exhibit a fundamental tension between two separate poles, requiring that one name remain hidden in order for the other to operate, one identity at the expense of another (no one, for example, would address Molly as Molly-Rose-Sally-Shears-Kolodny), the hybrid name of 3Jane fuses such poles together. Since, for 3Jane, such subterfuge is completely unnecessary.

Like Logan 5, 3Jane is a cloned entity who exists in a continuum of past selves. Unlike Logan 5, however, cloning is not something that the state imposes upon its workers, but a privilege reserved for the wealthy elite. Thus, far from existing as a form of oppression and alienation, as they might in both THX-1138 and Logan's Run, the number in 3Jane's name brands her as rich, decadent, and chic, since only the rich can afford to duplicate themselves. (4)

3Jane is the third in a line of wealthy Janes. She and her similarly cloned brother 8Jean are members of the Tessier-Ashpool family, a rich enclave that owns Freeside, a cigar shaped spindle that Gibson describes as:

In addition to representing the fused nature of 3Jane, a name that needs no duplicity due to the immense wealth that surrounds its bearer, the doubled name reflects a late twentieth century attitude towards dual identities.

In the 1980s, for example, bulletin board culture emerged as a space in which members could dial-up to a host computer and log-in under an assumed name. Then, as now, handles from Gibson's world abounded. In this culture the idea of a dual, "virtual" identity first took hold of the public imagination, and the cult of the Hacker began to flourish with such Hollywood representations as War Games (1983) and Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986). Such hackers existed as dual identities, both as their corporeal selves in the real world, and as computer wizards before whom no security was safe. And now, nearly twenty years after the publication of Neuromancer, names like 3Jane@hotmail.com, Case2000@earthlink.net, and TheFinn@yahoo.com exist in the space of the World Wide Web. In such a space one not need be a criminal, a hacker, or computer expert to enjoy the benefit of a dual identity.

Finally, the numbers in the names of 3Jane and 8Jean bear a striking similarity to the sudden proliferation of generation-based software that hit markets in the mid-eighties and early nineties. One year before the publication of Neuromancer, for example, Microsoft announced its new "Interface Manager, a system that sold as Microsoft Windows 1.0 in 1985. This was followed by Windows 2.0 in 1987 and Windows 3.0 in 1990. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 followed quickly afterwards, and it was not until 1995 that Microsoft abandoned this type of naming system in favor of the current year-to-year system, such as Windows 2000. (Fortune City) And, with each new installation, the prior generation became quickly obsolete. Like 3Jane, who can only exist at the expense of her frozen others, each generation of software emerges at the expense of its past counterparts.

f(N): THE FUNCTION OF THE NAME

In the names examined here, numbers appear to serve different masters. In Herbert's Dune, for example, they work to represent dynastic succession and a tension regarding computer technology. In Lucas' work, the numbers in the names THX-1138 and LUH-3417 act as dehumanizing agents and represent the conflicted identities of the characters who bear them. On the other hand, the number-names of such characters as C-3PO and R2D2 help to identify the robots as single-minded and loyal automatons, incapable of the human penchant for either rebellion or self-doubt. In Logan's Run, the name Logan 5 acts in such a way as to force Logan to confront his own mortality. And finally, in Gibson's Neuromancer, the name 3Jane reflects dynastic succession, dual identity, and emerging digital culture of the late eighties.

Yet despite such varying functions, the hybrid letter-number names within these works can be viewed as devices used to confront a variety of cultural anxieties towards the emergence of new technology in the second half of the twentieth century. In Herbert's work, this tension comes as a reaction to rapid developments in computer "evolution" and hearkens back to Darwinian tropes regarding the survival of the fittest.

In Lucas' works, the merging of letters and numbers reflects both a dread of machinery and fascination with new technology. That is, while THX-1138 might represent a dystopian future of a machine-run society, Lucas puts the machines in their place with R2D2 and C-3PO in the Star Wars saga.

In Logan's Run, the numbered names reflect a tension regarding individual identity and longevity in the face of genetic cloning and in vitro fertilization; and, in Gibson's Neuromancer, the name 3Jane, a true collision of letter and number, represents the proliferation of computer technology and digital culture in the mid-eighties.

Thus, while such functions of letter-number combinations do not necessarily conform to hard and fast rules, they seem--at least in the works studied here--to work as all numbers work, not only as signifiers that represent individual things in the world (every number a number of a thing), but as things in relations to other things, changing value in reaction to the varied forces that work upon them.

END NOTES:

(1) How much of the text is his and how much of the text is Kevin Anderson's is the matter of some interest.

(2) Another work that uses numbers in this manner is Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a novel about the annihilation of the human imagination, told from the point of view of D-503.

(3) Star Wars itself, however, due to slick special effects and the saga's serial and old-fashioned nature, is a hybrid beast. Not only does the project hearken to the old Flash Gordon serials of the thirties, it is itself a serial event, ordered oddly in terms of release: IV, V, VI, I, II, III. In this way the Star Wars films themselves reveal a split identity--Roman numerals as antique signs of succession, and characters like R2D2 and C-3PO with names suggesting technology of the far-flung future--even though they are supposed to have occurred a "long time ago."

(4) Since Jane's wealth is a result of her parents' legacy, the number 3 in her name also serves as a sign of dynastic succession, which in Neuromancer implies wealth, greed, and decadence.