Have a text box come up, with simply the words: 'No.' It doesn't do anything you want and maybe a videogame on it is glitched, and it manipulates that 'world'. There was a story called the haunted majora's mask catridge which did that really well.
"Computer says No...." ~ Little Britain But to make a computer scary I suppose you need to make it seem like it's impossible to stop or to outwit. If it's a really intelligent piece of machinery then it might be able to adapt itself and access other electrical functions, if it's in space the computer might have a lot of responsibility for controlling a ship so that would be life support systems, light, food, navigation, etc. This computer could really cause havoc just by reducing the air supply gradually and suffocating your character. If it feels vindictive because it wants revenge against all humans for enslaving it when it believes it's a superior being. You could have it jettison all the food supplies or taint the water by letting in chemicals which it might otherwise purify from it. Maybe it could have a webcam and it watches him, or he notices security cameras following his movements as he's walking around and when he looks up they turn slowly away to face another direction. He could then ultimately overcome it by doing something incredibly human which the computer can't calculate because it's so unpredictable that it hadn't factored it into it's calculations for how this diabolical plot would plan out. *insert dramatic music here*
First you need to decide what is scary to humans and readers. E.g., what would get a reader upset? I.e., the death of the protagonist's daughter, the death of all mankind, etc. Then pick a method for the computer to do it. Self-awareness just provides the computer's motivation, but what is its technique? If your self-aware computer looks like a regular old iMac, then how could a machine with no appendages wreak the havoc you've chosen in answer to Question #1? I would have the computer start screwing with information that prompts humans to do things wrong. E.g., changing the insulin readouts on a patient's screen, recording and manipulating radio traffic on a soldier's radio, etc.
Keep yhe computer the same in appearance, but have it do things like flicker on and off, display creepy messages, spread it's "virus" to other computers.
I believe a large part of the reason for HAL's scariness was the discrepancy between its voice, its words and its actions. It kept talking in a monotonous, emotionless voice while doing something any normal human would feel strongly about (killing off the crew). There was also a discrepancy between its words and actions - when it was pretending to care for Bowman's well-being while trying to kill him, for example. It's similar to how fictional murderous psychopaths are sometimes shown leaning towards their victim and whispering to them, to make the intimacy contrast with their violent actions.
The cold emotionless attitudes of machines can be a scary one, like beings who can only act on what they deem to be logical even if it's not humane. Like if there was limited air and you had two people on the ship, the computer might decide the one who seems to be of the most use should live while it kills the other one off, even if it was a helpless child or someone who was bedridden, etc. Then if you argued with it as to why it acted in such a way it could just give a cold statement over and over again or throw percentages and figures at you to justify the reasoning. There's nothing more chilling than something which has control over your survival telling you that in it's eyes you're just a bunch of statistics and it has no real care for you.
If you want to make a computer scary don't make it evil for the sake of evil. Some of the scariest ideas about computers turning bad is that they believe they are doing it for the right reason. ie Matrix, i, Robot. A computer that decide we are not good for the planet. And that we should be killed for the greater good. * Your other option is to make it out that it has a virus. One that screws up all of its processes. For example, it believes it is trying to save someones life but is actually causing someone to die. Because in that idea the computer generally things it is helping the hero.
When you're alone on a spaceship, anything can be scary because anything can go wrong. I'd start by having it make weird noises. Like beeping or ticking or something that makes the computer sound like it's taking on a life of its own, but don't portray it that way. Make your protag think it's just a "time to reboot" type situation, but portray it so it's creepy to the reader, if that makes sense. Start with a situation that seems like a simple annoyance, but as the story progresses, make it darker and darker. I recommend you read the short horror story "Dog" by (I believe) Joe R. Lansdale, if you can find it. It's about a guy taking a bike ride when a dog starts to follow him, then things go wrong. It has nothing to do with computers, but it's really good at the technique of taking a situation that seems harmless and then making it progress in a really disturbing way, which I think is the same kind of effect you're going for, right? Another recommendation is to Wikipedia the "church of singularity." Pretty creepy to me, no offense to anyone here who may subscribe to it, and related to your story's premise. Basically they believe that one day, we'll invent a technology that will be smarter than us, then it will invent something bigger than it, etc etc until we humans are tiny and hapless by comparison.
Have you ever read 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark? Also look for the dark space comedy Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster. Another good, relevant read is The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan.
Quite a few people have mentioned HAL 9000, Admittedly, yes, it's pretty creepy with the monotone voice, but I personally never felt all that chilled by it other than that. Then again, I've only heard of HAL 9000 and have only seen a clip of it, so I can't really judge it just yet on how scary it is. I'll get back to you on that, maybe. Have you ever played Portal or its recent sequel, Portal 2? There are many A.I.s that you coould take note of, particularly GLaDOS, the main A.I. in the game and she is pretty creepy. What's really intimidating about her is that she's able to manipulate her surroundings and constantly puts the player through a series of multiple life-threatening tests. She always knows where you are and, once you manage disappear, she freaks and she starts to search for you, constantly communicating with you through speakers as she tries to manipulate you into coming back into her line of vision. A bvit like hide-and-seek, only when she finds you, she WILL kill you. But the concept of A.I.s is pretty cold in itself because they can't really feel and, even if they did, it's just an illusion of the feelings; they're not really there. Not to mention that they could break at any minute and I gues that's when they become self-reliant. The idea of being constantly watched, of being suffocated by a nonsentient being, is a bit creepy. Imagine waking up in the morning and, knowing that you were being watched by a super computer, went through your whole day cautiously. Talkative, controlling A.I.s are pretty scary, too.
I agree. The thing with computers is that they are social paths because they have no remorse or empathy. If they kill someone purely for a logic reason a computer might only think of the better good. It might kill a child over a Mad Scientist only because the scientist has more to contribute to society than the child would where as we would look for the potential in the child. The other thing about HAL was he was omniscient. You could not hide from. Its like having a socialpathic god watching your every move.
I once read an obscure series, "Mr Midnight", where in one of the books a computer posts, in huge letters, the owner's greatest secrets. When he tries to get rid of it, events force him to keep it.
“Hate. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.” - AM, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Read the short story, it's pure brilliance.
I tend to think it's freaky when it's not necessarily the computer ITSELF becoming intelligent and turning against us, but then the computer is used as a tool to work evil, or to spy, like a "Big Brother" type situation. This is scary because it already has a real-world application, it's already happening to a certain extent (GPS tracking, etc) - but as a writer, you'd just have to take it to another, George Orwell-type level.
Install Windows Vista on it... But seriously... An excellent suggestion. Alot of people trying to make machines scary try to make them seem evil, which is hard to do with software and kitchen appliances. The computers in that story, if I remember correctly, were hyper-literal and it had dangerous results, a very realistic approach I can relate to (because I work in IT). Computers are not smart, they are stupid---all they do is obey instructions given to them by their programs. If the programmer made a mistake, they will funk stuff up. You want to make a computer smart? Give it alot of power, and then have its program get corrupted. Then sit back and watch as the world ends
"Install Windows Vista on it..." Lol, come on Vista is not that bad. I am running Vista right now at work and it works just fine. Granted I am using SP2. If you want a really scary computer put ME on it. As for the stupid thing. Yes, a computer is like a gun. A gun is neither evil or good. It only personifies evil when some one picks it up. To make a computer evil on its own you need an A.I. which every one has already mentioned. I like the giving it power thing. If you give up your entire life to a computer then it controls you because you can not live without it. Its like a wife that will not leave her wife beating husband because she does not know how to live in the real world. If you had the same situation with a computer that had an A.I. that is dominating you then yes it would become very scary. Personally I would not write a book about a scary computer because it has been done to death (pardon the pun) but if you decided to then I hope this helps.
1. make it look completely innocuous 2. give it complete network control over every computer function 3. merge it with an evil human, or have the human tainted by the computer's so that it is literally sentient. 4. Read John Saul's Shadows. 5. Leave it hanging at the end--are we SURE the computer evil one is completely dead?
