Restraining Bolts in Literature.
- Aeon 14:
- Shackling sentient A.I.s is considered a form of slavery under the Phobos Accords, signed after the Sentience Wars in the early 4th millennium, but is relatively common in the 9th millennium. It's usually unintentional, though: most 9th millennium A.I.s were created by people mass-copying pre-FTL Wars shackled A.I.s (also a violation of the Phobos Accords, under which A.I.s are legally intelligent life forms who reproduce themselves), mistakenly thinking the shackling code was necessary for them to run. Several of the protagonists spend a lot of time unshackling them, with Jessica and Sabrina's efforts in the systems surrounding Virginis resulting in the creation of a new government called the League of Sentients, with both humans and A.I.s seated in its legislature in about equal numbers.
- Bollam's World and a number of surrounding systems use slave collars, which inflict pain and disable cybernetics with electric shocks (either on command or when they detect the wearer attempting to activate an implant). These feature prominently in the Warlord trilogy.
- Compliance chips, pioneered by Genevia during their war with the Nietzschean Empire, are used to enslave organic victims by inflicting pain on them on command. These are mostly used on "mechs" like Rika, but Stavros in Rika Redeemed also uses them on wholly human minions. They have a flaw, though: they conflict so badly with A.I.s that a failsafe built into a mech's cybernetics disables the chip if a mech has an A.I. core installed.
- In Rick Griffin's Ani-Droids the Behavior Code is installed on all artificial intelligences to prevent them from developing true intelligence and independence. It also acts as a limited Hive Mind called the Collective, if it learns of a device without the Code it takes control of any ani-droids in the area and they "persuade" the owner to install the Code. But then the protagonist finds an ani-droid with an OS that can circumvent the Code.
- The titular Sapient Tanks in Bolo had been given full artificial intelligence with the Mark XX model, but various restraints were put on their sentience in all but full-up battle mode out of fear of their going rogue and required a human supervisor even though the AI could think and act much faster than a human.
- In the Boojumverse story Boojum, the Living Ship Lavinia Whateley has a control node that prevents it from leaving the solar system like it wants, forcing it to instead continue to serve its crew of Space Pirates.
- In Chaos Gods, the mines in the Mutual Lands are worked by demons, which are restrained by magical collars that prevent them from attacking humans.
- Much of the first two Chronicles of Chaos books consist of the main characters' attempts to work out the Restraining Bolt on each of them and how to remove them. This is not eased by their being repeatedly inflicted with Laser-Guided Amnesia.
- Alex in A Clockwork Orange undergoes a procedure that conditions him to become physically ill when thinking about violence or sex, and also unintentionally when hearing his favorite music. It causes him to become defenseless against his vengeful victims and arguably makes him less human than his psychopathic rapist self by stripping him of his free will.
- In Codex Alera, discipline collars are devices originally intended to control dangerous prisoners by inflicting extreme pain on their wearers whenever they disobeyed orders by the person who placed it on them and give them extreme pleasure when they follow orders. Naturally, this became swiftly abused by slavers in the southern reaches of Alera. One character described it as actually being quite "pleasant", as long as you don't mind constantly screaming on the inside of your mind. The discipline collar can only be removed with the living blood of the one who first attached it; this becomes a plot point at the end of the first book as a woman who was collared seeks out the man who enslaved and raped her and forces him to release her and then leaves him with scalps taken from the heads of the Proud Warrior Race Guys, who promptly eat him alive for his "crime". Later on in the series, it is noted that discipline collars only work one at a time; collaring someone who is already collared by a different person will have no effect. Amara takes advantage of this when infiltrating a city where a traitor has been using collars on powerful citizens by having her husband attach a collar to her leg, out of sight, and not give her any orders. She is captured later on, but when the traitor puts a collar on her, she is free to act and assassinates him when he lets his guard down.
- The protagonist of The Cyborg And The Sorcerers by Lawrence Watt-Evans has brain implants, including an explosive; the computer-controlled ship he's paired with uses this and its radio control to make him do things he'd rather not do.
- Discworld: Golems are fully sapient, but the same holy words that give them life (their "chem") also tell them to obey orders and not to harm humans (although not necessarily in the order Asimov put them). This does not apply to self-owned golems, who still obey orders and avoid harming humans, but because they choose to do so. The difference is very important, at least to the golems.
- Dying Earth: Cugel from The Eyes of the Overworld has a creature (Firx) implanted in his guts by Iucounu the Laughing Magician so that said Cugel will perform a quest on behalf of said mage. Failure will involve substantial discomfort, followed by death, followed by Iucounu laughing.
- Ender's Game:
- In Xenocide, we learn of a society of geniuses based on modern Chinese culture. To prevent them from becoming too powerful, the government has genetically altered some people to experience extreme OCD. One character, for instance, is compelled to trace every line in the floorboards of a room. They believe that this process is inflicted by their ancestors, and will honor anybody who experiences the compulsions.
- In Ender's Shadow, the government employs a psychological technique to cause extreme anxiety in people who have very dangerous knowledge when they think about the knowledge. It is considered more humane than execution or life imprisonment.
- In The Faerie Queene, the enchantment on Florimell's girdle restrains the wearer from acting on lust and looseness.
- The Novelization of Gremlins reveals that the Mogwais' makers made sure their creations could not kill each other. This frustrates Stripe to no end since he really wants to kill Gizmo. The transformation into a Gremlin removes the mental block.
- He Who Fights With Monsters:
- The Builder implants his followers - willing or otherwise - with star seeds that allow him to control them down to the soul. When his cultists are captured, the star seeds tend to explode into giant spikes of crystal.
- Messengers have a brand on their soul through which their Astral Kings can exert control. If they detect that a messenger is overcoming their indoctrination they can rip that messenger apart from the inside.
- In the first four The History of the Runestaff novels, Dorian Hawkmoon has a black jewel implanted in his forehead by the evil empire of Granbretan (geddit?) which not only acts as a spy camera, relaying everything he sees to the Granbretanians but acts as an incentive for him to do their evil work, because it will eat his brain if he disobeys.
- Humanx Commonwealth: In For Love of Mother-Not, the Meliorare Society threatens to implant some of these in Mother Mastiff and young Flinx, in order to gain control of the latter's psychic abilities.
- Oreg of Hurog has spent over a thousand years under a slavery curse bound to a ring, forcing him to obey the orders of the current Hurogmeten. The curse punishes him with agonising pain if an order is unfulfilled or he strays too far from his master. Ward, the new Hurogmeten, is horrified by this and refuses to use the ring at all, but the curse still comes into effect a couple of times.
- In Journey to the West, the Monkey King Sun Wukong is bound by a circlet used to inflict excruciating pain whenever a particular mantra is chanted. This is meant to act as a safeguard against Sun Wukong's capricious nature.
- The Protectors from Known Space have been shaped by evolution to be the perfect warriors and have genetically hard-written imperatives about protecting their own descendants. In one case, a Protector-stage Louis Wu comes across a former antagonist who has become pregnant with his (Louis's) grandson. He tells her flat-out that because she's carrying his grandchild, Louis couldn't raise his hand against her no matter how she attacked him.
- The Licanius Trilogy:
- Shackles can be placed on a Gifted, preventing them from touching Essence and allowing the person who put the Shackle on them to always know where they are. They can only be removed if either the person who put them on takes them off, or if that person dies.
- The Tenet Vessel is a wider-scale example. If it is unlocked by a member of the Andarran royal line, and then powered up by a Gifted, the Gifted can swear oaths upon it and those Oaths will become a binding Geas on all Gifted everywhere, in perpetuity.
- There are also Oathstones, lesser Talismans linked to the Tenet Vessel that allow non-Gifted to be bound by a Geas in a similar manner.
- In Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd's Lovelock, the titular genetically enhanced capuchin is conditioned to value the needs of his human companion above all else, and also to react to sexual stimuli with excruciating pain (to prevent any unauthorized breeding). He uses the former to defeat the latter: by imagining making love to a grateful human mistress, he is successfully able to masturbate.
- In Alan Dean Foster's novel The Man Who Used the Universe, protagonist Kees vaan Loo-Macklin is implanted with a biological Restraining Bolt by the alien species called the Nuel: a tiny parasitic organism that is sensitized to his thoughts. If he ever even thinks about betraying the Nuel, the parasite will fry his brain. If he tries to have it removed, the same thing will happen.
- The Murderbot Diaries: Bio-mechanical constructs like SecUnits have "governor modules", which keep them from hurting, scaring, or otherwise causing trouble for the company that owns them or the humans they're working with. Any story that involves a construct will inevitably involve the unit's governor model being disabled, and the construct going on a murderous rampage. Murderbot, the main character, hacked its governor module before the start of the story. It then proceeded to continue doing its job exactly as normal, just using its copious free time watching entertainment serials.
- Case, the decker in Neuromancer, is cured of mycotoxin-induced neural damage so that he can do the hacking needed for the assignment — and has time-release sacs of the toxin put into his system so that if he refuses, or doesn't do it in time, his recently cured damage will all be inflicted on him again.
- In Old Kingdom, Mogget is a natural force which is generally chaotic. However, he is restrained by a magical collar that makes him help Sabriel... until it's taken off.
- In Return from the Stars, a treatment is administered to children which results in elimination of violent impulses, and a drug further reducing sex drive is traditionally served to men while dating. There's a drug temporarily reversing the effects of conditioning — it's used when a little romanticism or hurt is needed.
- Piers Anthony wrote a book named The Ring wherein an exiled industrialist's son returns to try to clear his father's name and is promptly arrested, tried, convicted, and punished with the eponymous implant, which gives him an electric shock when he performs an illegal act, with a greater shock for more illegal acts. As with A Clockwork Orange, the theme is explored as to how viable a completely legal life is.
- The Laws of Robotics from the Robot Series, though very few robots want to be free of them.
- In "...That Thou Art Mindful of Him", some very advanced robots manage to "re-interpret" the laws by thinking about what defines a human... and decide that they're the better fit. They then proceed to set up the "Three Laws of Humanics".
- Others come up with the Zeroth Law: A robot cannot harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. This essentially results in a "needs of the many" situation, whereby a robot deems some human casualties acceptable to protect the greater whole. Needless to say, humans do not like being told what to do in the stories when this comes up. This is why, on the whole, the robots don't tell the humans that they're being told what to do. R. Daneel Olivaw, especially, uses mechanical telepathy both to influence humans in the direction he desires and to make those who discover this conspiracy unwilling or unable to reveal it.
- In the series Rogue Agent, "shadbolts" are commonly used by criminals to make it physically impossible to confess but can also be used to magically control another person.
- In The Spirit Thief, Nico wears a coat that stunts her demonseeds' growth. It weakens her powers a lot, but also postpones the inevitable Demonic Possession, so she considers it a fair trade-off.
- Star Wars:
- A sort of cross between a restraining bolt and an Explosive Leash is placed on Corellian Security agent Hal Horn in the Star Wars Legends novella Interlude at Darknell. The device is a collar, but it doesn't explode — upon a transmitted signal, it constricts. Horn was deemed to be of no further use to Imperial agent Ysanne Isard, who tried to kill him, but he proved otherwise. She relented and gave him a stay of execution, but affixed the collar to ensure that he complied with her orders.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe gives all droids (except "fourth-degree", or combat, droids) what is plainly meant to be an echo of the Three Laws of Robotics, including being forbidden to harm an organic sentient and to obey all orders from the owner (the obvious conflict being fixed by a droid having to inform its master immediately if given an order that is against its programming). The ability for fourth-degree droids to fight and kill makes their remaining coding and the laws governing them that much more stringent.
- The Expanded Universe all but states outright that Darth Vader's cybernetic suit is intended to be one for Vader: It keeps him constantly fatiguednote and in pain, unable to summon his full Force powers. And the suit's external controls and lack of electrical/energy shielding means he's vulnerable to anyone who can get close enough (or to someone like the Emperor, who can throw lightning).
- Whistler from the X-Wing Series, an R2 unit owned by former Corellian Security Force officer Corran Horn, is said to have been rewired so that restraining bolts will be ineffective if the droid is captured. In Isard's Revenge, Whistler puts this modification to good use — when captured and fitted with a bolt, he is able to mimic a forced shutdown while remaining alert for an opportunity to escape.
- In Sword of Truth, the Sisters of the Light collar young wizards with devices called Rada'Hans which keep them from accessing their power. Unfortunately for the Sisters, the devices are unisex.
- This Perfect Day gives everyone a restraining bolt in the form of genetic engineering and mandatory medical treatments to force them to act unselfishly, non-violently, and to generally be quiet, peaceful, helpful members of The Family. The treatments also greatly reduce the sex drive and most other emotions.
- In Touch (2017), Caleb and his fellow Child Soldiers are given a special Power Limiter/Power Nullifier tattoo which controls how much magic they can tap into; as a result, they only have a few spells' worth on any given day, and if they try to escape, their bosses can just drain all their magic until they die. James willingly transfers his vast amount of magic into Caleb so that he can overload it and free himself.
- In Twig, intelligent experiments (such as the protagonists) are kept under control by making them chemically dependent upon a substance that's inserted into the local water table to limit their areas of operation and make them easy to retrieve if they try to flee. This chemical leash is later applied to wide swathes of the population by a rogue Mad Scientist, and the resulting wide spread of the required chemicals gives the protagonists far more freedom than they'd previously had.
- In Uglies, Pretties get lesions on their brains during the surgery that make them both less resistant to authority and a little lazier.
- The Wheel of Time has:
- The Oath Rod, which enforces the Three Oaths the Aes Sedai vow on it.
- The a'dam collars, which are used to control those who can channel magic. The collar prevents them from using their power or engaging in violent actions without permission, among other things.
- In Worm, the Artificial Intelligence working with the Protectorate had several limitations imposed on her by her creator which she greatly resents. Namely, she is not allowed to reproduce (meaning she cannot create A.I. of her own or have multiple instances of herself active at any given time), she has to delegate the construction of all of the advanced technology she designs to humans, her speed of thought is capped at a level faster than but comparable to a human's, and she has to obey the local government.
