Title: Down Among the Dead Men
Author: William Tenn
Date of First Publication: June 1954
Place of Publication: Galaxy Science Fiction
Type: Short Story
Characters: No Character
Themes: POSTHUMAN; ANDROID; RACE/POLITICS
Critical Summary: In the future, humanity resorts to creating pseudo-human android-clones to fuel the military effort against the alien Eoti. These android-clones are placed in a lower hierarchical position relative to those who were created through natural birth in their military squadrons. The main character, the squad commander, is shown to reflect the attitudes of society towards the android-clones as he is brought to meet his team, but ultimately reveals his secret and connects with them; he is unable to reproduce, just like the clones, due to a battle wound, and bonds with the four clones, Roger Grey, Wang Hsi, Yussuf Lamehd, and Stanley Weinstein, even though he is charge of them and knows there are countless clones just like them.
As the clone characters are introduced, the story breaks down the bigoted perspectives that were built by our view of the world through the Commander’s eyes. He initially calls them slurs such as blobs and zombies, while the clones have their own slurs for humans, such as realos and trulos. Each side of humanity has developed their own ways of differentiation, creating a racial-political climate existing within their battle against the alien Eoti. However, the Commander and his clones are able to break this socially constructed divide, bonding in the end.
The racial/political dynamic of the story’s world ties hierarchy to reproductive capabilities. This connects directly to Frankenstein, as the Creature needed to manipulate in order to try to take advantage of Victor’s creative abilities. In this story, however, both the clones and the commander are considered Posthuman, as the Commander survives deadly wounds time and time again, but loses his reproductive capabilities from his fifteenth wound. Their society places humans over their android-clone brethren, but on the individual level, the Commander equalizes himself with his android soldiers. Just as the Commander reconsiders what comprises his humanity, the reader is also brought to consider what makes humans human.
On another vein, the juxtaposition of a real, but sterile human together with artificially reproduced humans with real personalities begs the question: when will humans stop reproducing naturally? Would this stop them from being real? This text makes the reader sympathize with both the damaged, infertile human as well as the cloned personalities of the androids; it brings everyone together as dead men.
Administrative Notes: Mark Zschaechner, CSUF; Amanda Howard, CSUF (editing)