Title: The Wizard of West Orange
Author: Stephen Milhauser
Date of First Publication: April 2007
Publisher: Place of First Publication: Harper’s Magazine (New York, NY: Harper Collins)
Bibliographic Reference: isfdb
Type: Short Story (Novelette)
Themes: ANDROID; BYRONIC HERO; FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER; RETRO SF
Critical Summary: “The Wizard of West Orange” is a story told through the diary entries of a librarian, concerning happenings at a research laboratory under the control of a renowned scientific genius, called simply, the Wizard, an allusion to the inventor Thomas Alva Edison. The Wizard is a skilled inventor and supervises many ongoing projects at the laboratory, with the ultimate goal of being able to replicate all five of the human senses using machines. He comments on film’s ability to replicate eyesight, and the librarian learns of a highly secretive project being carried out in “The Box,” a guarded room in the basement that involves experiments and machinery that are supposed to mimic the sense of touch. Heading up these experiments is one of the best scientists under the Wizard, a man named Kistenmacher. Kistenmacher enlists the help of the librarian and another (more unwilling) participant—a clerk named Earnshaw—to act as test subjects for the touch-replicating device he calls a haptograph.
The two subjects meet with Kistenmacher at different times in secret, each donning a body suit full of wires and metal caps that connects to a battery unit with replaceable cylinders. The cylinders can be switched out and each one contains a single sensation that can be “read” by the suit and converted into touch with the use of the metal caps. The librarian discovers that the metal caps can move across the skin in a way that replicates familiar ordinary sensations—a sock being pulled up the leg, a handshake, taking a hat on and off, to name a few. However, the experiments quickly escalate when the librarian is subjected to more unusual sensations, like a soft wave of touch encompassing his full body or a feeling of being suspended. These sensations expand the librarian’s consciousness, bringing him to a new level of awareness and making him feel new and reborn. He begins to obsess over the time he spends in the suit, longing to return to the powerful mental state the suit brings him. He discovers that The Wizard plans to release the haptograph to the public in as little as three years, and he begins to wonder if the sensations he has experienced are too powerful to be in the hands of everyday people.
In a fit, Earnshaw destroys the haptograph and the Wizard scraps the project, making Kistemacher adopt a less controversial task. The librarian realizes that the revolutionary nature of the haptograph might incite panic rather than understanding in the general population. Or, perhaps, the Wizard simply thought he could not profit in a meaningful way from the haptograph. Whatever the reason, the librarian is forced to move on to other experiments.
Like Victor Frankenstein, the librarian (and perhaps the brooding and Byronic Wizard) realizes the dual nature of scientific progress. Though Victor and the librarian experience science at its most inventive, they also must acknowledge that there is a danger in fully realizing one’s dreams. Both their creations disrupt the “natural” order of things—Frankenstein’s creature existing as a reanimated being, and the haptograph creating new and powerful sensations that cause the librarian’s perceptions of reality to shift. Frankenstein’s research hovers over the chasm between life and death, and Frankenstein himself creates a new sort of being that he believes will bridge the gap. Similarly, the Wizard and Kistenmacher create a machine that not only replicates human touch, but also reveals the untapped potential of touch. More simply, each story traces the process of research and development—from the conception of an idea to the realization of that idea.
Administrative Notes: Molly Robertson, CSUF