A Logic Named Joe

The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get". In the story, a logic (whom Ducky later calls Joe) develops some degree of sapience and ambition. Joe proceeds to switch around a few relays in "the tank" (one of a distributed set of central information repositories), and cross-correlate all information ever assembled – yielding highly unexpected results. It then proceeds to freely disseminate all of those results to everyone on demand (and simultaneously disabling all of the content-filtering protocols). Logics begin offering up unexpected assistance to everyone which includes designing custom chemicals that alleviate inebriation, giving sex advice to small children, and plotting the perfect murder. Eventually Ducky "saves civilization" by locating and turning off the only logic capable of doing this. ==Reception==

In 1982, Isaac Asimov lauded the story as "prophetic" and "one of [Leinster's] finest", and observed that it "actually get(s) things right", if one "change(s) 'logics' to 'home computers' and make(s) a few other inconsequential semantic changes". In 2007, Dave Truesdale praised it as "absolutely incredible" and "one of the greatest predictive, prophetic short SF stories in history, bar none", noting "how righteously dead on Leinster is in his depiction of the home personal computer and the internet in 1946!" In 2012, Steven H Silver, reviewing the 2005 Leinster collection A Logic Named Joe, stated that "(i)f it hadn't predicted the rise of the internet, 'A Logic Named Joe' would be seen as a dated story rather than as an important work", but emphasized that it is "still an enjoyable story". == Publication history ==

"A Logic Named Joe" has appeared in the collections Sidewise in Time (Shasta, 1950), The Best of Murray Leinster (Del Rey, 1978), First Contacts (NESFA, 1998), and A Logic Named Joe (Baen, 2005), and was also included in the Machines That Think compilation, with notes by Isaac Asimov, published 1984 Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ==References==