Short Story 'Scanners Live In Vain'

Michael Bogda
Professor Opitz
CSCL 3461: Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs
14 December 2010
Scanners Live in Vain Years before Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline first coined the term cyborg, many authors had described such beings in their work. A cyborg by definition is part man and part machine, but not entirely either. In the short story “Scanners Live in Vain,” Cordwainer Smith embodies the cyborg in a unique being called scanners. Scanners live in the form of men they once were with mechanical and computer modifications surgically inserted into their bodies. The modifications allow nonhuman capabilities to be achieved, but sacrifices human capabilities such as emotion, and all senses other than sight. Scanners live for one purpose and will take any measure to preserve their order.
Scanners are fundamentally cyborgs.
They are men that have volunteered their service and daily life to an order to preserve life in space. These men must undergo a procedure to become part machine in order to defeat the “Great Pain of Space” which affects normal humans. Each Scanner is allowed to monitor their health and those around it with the machines making up part of its body. The actual job of scanners is to watch over the work of “Haberman.” Haberman are criminals who have gone under the same procedure as Scanners but lack the ability to scan their health and are indebted to labor on space flights. To become a Haberman or Scanner and avoid the pain of space, a procedure that cuts the brain off from sensory input other than sight must be made. Haberman must exist in this state at all times, but Scanners are allowed the liberty to undergo what they call cranching, a reconnection of the neural sensors. This allows a short period of relative humanity with all sense and emotional capability. Scanners exist in a mechanical state obedient to an elitist confraternity that demands order and obedience, only being human while “under the wire” of
cranching. As a Scanner, emotion and rational thought are given up to blind obedience of cold, mechanical decision. When a man named Adam Stone announces that he has found a way for normal humans to travel space without pain, the Scanners become alarmed and hold a meeting to decide what to do with the need of their work coming to an end. The protagonist Scanner Martel attends the meeting cranched and is capable of realizing that the decision made to assassinate Stone is morally wrong and would hurt the human population. The Scanners hold none of that emotion and follow the commands they are given no matter what stands in the way. This is what makes Scanner’s existence somewhat monstrous. They feel no emotion in their calculating thoughts. Without being cranched, they are more machine than man. They hold the power to stop space travel, as well as perform modifications to their bodies to allow them almost superhuman ability. They hold the power of human life in their hands. When compared to the cyborgs described by Clynes and Kline, Scanners are very similar in the ability to adjust dials to control bodily functions such as the adrenal gland. A major difference is the giving up of humanity that the Scanner role requires. Clynes and Kline described cyborg beings as having improvements made to their bodies. Scanners must live without improvement but rather a lack of normal human state of mind. Scanners become men once again at the end of the story as Adam Stone is allowed to show how humans may conquer the pain of space and surgically removes the machines that make up the Scanners. With humans able to travel space freely, Haberman can die a normal death and the Scanners can be human once again.