Sunday book pick: The perils of artificial intelligence in the 1966 novel ‘Flowers for Algernon’

Charlie Gordon, 32 years old, IQ 68 is the star of Daniel Keyes’s iconic science fiction novel, Flowers for Algernon.

With unusually low intelligence for an adult, Charlie is inept at reading social cues, cannot understand or control some bodily functions, and struggles to read and write. He works as a cleaner at Mr Donner’s bakery who hired Charlie 17 years ago as a favour to his close friend, Charlie’s uncle. While Mr Donner is kind to him and pays him fairly, he is often the butt of other’s employee’s jokes and he interprets their laughter and taunts as offers of friendship. Long estranged from his family, Charlie has been picked up by scientists who want to make him “smart”. He’s happy to play the guinea pig as long as he can be like “other pepul” so he can have “lots of frends who like me.”

The doctors have encouraged him to keep a “progress report” to record his journey, feelings, and possible intellectual development. Charlie’s reports, though full of spelling and grammatical errors and no punctuation, are a charming insight into an atypical brain. Keyes forces the reader to slow down and one is compelled to think about the rules of language. Charlie spells words as...

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