They'd Rather Be Right

Bossy had no choice in the matter.

Bossy was right. Always. Invariably. She didn't want to be; she wasn't afraid of not being. She was limited only in that she had to have facts—not assumptions—with which to work. Given those facts, her conclusions and predictions were inevitably correct.

And that made Bossy a ticking bomb.

Actually, the whole thing had been a fluke from the very beginning. Bossy had been designed as a servomechanism for guiding airplanes and preventing them from crashing. But so much was demanded of her, she became something much greater: a hyper-computer. And the men who worked with and around Bossy suddenly found themselves able to solve their problems, to erase their prejudices—in short, to think.

Did the world welcome Bossy, then, with open arms and glad cries? No, because for five decades the world had been in the grip of opinion control, and Bossy represented a serious and immediate threat to that dominance. So Bossy had to go underground. Her inventors had to disassemble her, pack her up, and flee with her from the rage of government and populace alike, to work in hiding while testing Bossy's full potentialities and judging her true value to humanity. Which was why Joe Carter, the world's only true telepath, and the tremendously brilliant Professors Billings and Hoskins had to assume the role of Skid Row bums.

All this is only the beginning of one of the most thoughtfully written, and thought-provoking, science fiction novels ever written. While it revolves around Bossy, that super-scientific miracle of advanced cybernetics, They'd Rather Be Right is primarily a story of people—all kinds of people. It shows, convincingly and compellingly, what would happen if everyone in the world were given a single blunt command: Think or die.

Most people, as Mark Clifton and Frank Riley demonstrate, would "rather be right" —and firmly believe that they are right. Only a small handful are mature enough to realize that they don't know all the answers. And it was to this small handful—and this small handful alone—that Bossy offered the greatest gift of all: immortality.

Mabel, the sagging, blowzy belle of Skid Row, took the treatment, and became a beautiful, brilliant immortal—and, to Joe Carter's delight, a telepath as well. Professor Jonathan Billings, renowned Dean of Psychosomatic Medicine at Hoxworth University, took the treatment too—and it was a complete failure. Bossy could do nothing for people who clung to fixed ideas.

But the people wanted immortality, wanted it with a fixed and burning desire. Mechanic or mathematician, each man figured that he deserved the gift. And gradually the tension increased, the mobs grew restless, the military became more demanding—and the bomb ticked swiftly on.

And it was up to Joe Carter to stave off catastrophe.

They'd Rather Be Right is full of excitement, both physical and mental. It is full, too, of rich rewards for the reader who appreciate, genuinely mature philosophy tinged with gentle irony. And among other things, it is that very rare event: a science fiction novel based on a brand-new idea.