Weekly Short Story: Let's Be Frank by Brian Aldiss

"It is an impossible story scientifically speaking, but it makes a weird kind of sense with a socko last paragraph".  This was how science fiction legend Isaac Asimov described the brief but brilliant 1957 tale Let's Be Frank, written by Brian Aldiss and appearing in Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stores 19 (1957), (DAW Books).  Frank Gladwebb, a young English nobleman living in the sixteenth century, fathers a son...who remains in a deep sleep for his first nineteen years of life.  Upon awakening, son and father discover that they are one and the same...a shared consciousness between two different bodies.  Eventually Frank II has his own offspring, some of whom are "normal", but also...and it becomes obvious that this is a genetic mutation (although genes and mutations had yet to be discovered)...there are more "Franks".  Go down the line a few generations and we are seeing a hidden, embedded society of people, outwardly looking distinctly different, but inwardly (and simultaneously) the same conscious entity.  Where does this all eventually lead? Read it and find out!

Aldiss provided the explanation of genetic mutation for the Frank "syndrome", and Asimov posited that it was all scientifically impossible, but I have a slightly different proposition about this.  If one accepts the notion of a consciousness inhabiting a body, then certain possibilities open up.  Suppose it is like the case with the Franks in this story...but pretend that there is no simultaneous awareness of the others.  After all, each person has his or her own internal nervous system, brain, and memory, and has to process information and experiences within the limits of physical laws.  Suppose a consiousness...like Frank...permeates many, many different bodies.  In Aldiss's story, they all are experiencing all of themselves with complete mutual awareness...but suppose it's all just like the author presented it except that each body...despite sharing the same consciousness...was cut off from each other due to physical restraints.  In such a case each person would think that he or she is the entire conscious entity instead of realizing their commonality with one another. You don't need to go much further with this line of reasoning before you're plunging deeply into metaphysics and religion...

I like stories like Let's Be Frank that present an intriguing angle on the nature of reality...and our role as living beings in it.  But still, it is probably scientifically impossible, especially as that "socko last paragraph" reveals...