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The classical cognitive scientific model of autism purports to explain why we are social creatures. Yet it has attempted to do so through varieties of the mind-as-computer analogy, which undermines the model's ability to carry out its analyses of sociality. I shall investigate this problematic through the lens of Elizabeth Moon's novel about autism, The Speed of Dark.
Late in Elizabeth Moon's Nebula Award-winning science-fiction novel The Speed of Dark, the autistic protagonist Lou Arrendale asks a doctor what effect an experimental surgery to remedy his autism might have on his basic intelligence. "Shouldn't have any, really," the doctor responds: "That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing- it's what makes generalization so difficult-and it's you people, autistic people, who sort of proved that it's possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way below the curve in expressive language" (265). The doctor's explanation is informed by the precepts of cognitive science and the modular theory of mind. In keeping with this framework, he explains that the mind/brain is like a computer, at least insofar as it is constituted by a series of modules, or systems, that have each evolved to perform distinct tasks: a module for math, a module for expressive language, a module for facial recognition, etc. But while the doctor seems confident in his vision, Moon's novel is less so. Indeed, The Speed of Dark betrays considerable ambivalence about modularity and other computer metaphors.
Strictly in terms of plot, this ambivalence marks the fact that the experimental surgery is both a promise and a threat. Lou Arrendale is a high-functioning "autist" who enjoys fencing and has a job at a pharmaceutical corporation, where he engages in highly advanced information analysis. Both he and a small group of similarly employed autists are granted certain support measures in light of their special skills: a gymnasium, regular counselling, personal sound systems, private parking lots, etc. They are a highly productive group, but their boss, the vile Gene Crenshaw, winces at all their "luxuries." As he explains in threateningly banal tones to the group's supervisor, Pete Aldrin, "this company is going places, and it needs a workforce of unimpaired, productive workers-people...