A robotic heroine tries to recalibrate a better life

THE notion of constructing a synthetic creature that could supplement or supplant organic women extends back at least as far as E T A Hoffmann’s short story (1816). Fritz Lang’s film (1927) provided a vibrant and startling instance of the concept with its art deco robot named Maria.

With the explosion of science fiction from the late 30s onward, female robots and androids abounded. (1972 in book form, 1975 for the film) crystallised a “feminists vs the patriarchy” take on the theme, while later movies such as

(2014) tried a more nuanced examination of the trope. Surely the unbeatable apex of this subgenre is Richard Calder’s decadent Beardsleyesque trilogy (1992-1996), in which reproductively sterile sex dolls from jewellery maker Cartier prove so irresistible that the human race besottedly follows a path to extinction.

Ros Anderson’s debut novel

is the latest offering in this vein. It breaks no new ground, but the depth of its first-person presentation of the silicone-andcircuitry heroine is a quiet triumph.

We meet “Sylv.ie” fresh out of the box, so to speak, as she boots up en route to her purchaser Husband. A successful go-getter, the Husband has installed Sylv.ie as his concubine in the attic of a suburban home, all with the grudging approval of his wife (the First Lady, as Sylv.ie dubs her). One of many commercially available Createds, Sylv.ie’s life revolves, of course, around frequent sex. But she can also play chess, conduct witty and informed conversation, and generally function as a model mistress should, according to the Four Hierarchies (a sly détournement of Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics):

Love, obey and delight your Husband. You exist to serve him.

Honour his family above yourself; never come between them.

Don't harm your Husband, or his family, nor any Human.

Make no demands, but meet them, and obey every reasonable Human request.

In her downtime, Sylv.ie is

Sandman Metropolis

Hierarchies

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The Stepford Wives

Dead Girls

Ex Machina

The

The encouraged to keep a diary of her inner life, and this proves to be her undoing, as she gradually raises her own consciousness.

Sylv.ie’s enlightenment never becomes political. Anderson does not excoriate the patriarchy, and in fact the First Lady has a fine and important job and seems to dominate her Husband. Human women no longer even have to give birth the primal way, but instead subscribe to Huxleyan mechanical wombs. However, the central problem for human women is this:

“You Createds have liberated women.” That is what Abramski tells us all the time. “And the women aren’t even grateful! You’ve taken something from them they didn’t know was precious. They outsourced the sex and they don’t like that the power went too.”

Sylv.ie’s growing dissatisfaction leads to an odyssey of tribulations and soul-annealing, her “becoming”. She runs away from home but is quickly caught and returned. A trip back to the doll factory for a reset results in a jarring learning-curve reacquaintance with herself. A second escape is more successful, but now Sylv.ie – constrained from almost all self-defence – is at the mercy of humans at large. She meets the Scrap Man, is sold to a doll brothel, finds a kind of peace in the sex work and falls in love. Ultimately, though, even this refuge can’t last, and Sylv.ie makes one final escape to quietly contemplate her checquered biography:

“I was born, brought in a box, to a Husband. I came from a hospital and went back there, to be born again. I gave birth to a coffee machine. Can that be right?”

Anderson’s prose – Sylv.ie’s voice – offers a beautiful combination of naivete and wisdom, full of non-human puzzlements, off-kilter observations and limpid poetry.

The story comes to the reader in friendly bite-sized (or byte-sized?) chunks that serve to emulate

Sylv.ie’s thoughts, now dealing with “Babies”, “Tears”, and “Dreams”.

Beneath the well-done sciencefictional skin, there’s a hidden fairy-tale archetype – the tale of Pinocchio. A “wooden” creature magicked into sentience, Silv.ie longs for a Blue Fairy to make her a “real girl”. |