Weightless Books

Imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when robots are manufactured and sold commercially, occupying a space in nearly every human household. Sue Lange evokes this reality as a backdrop for her novella We Robots, which examines the painful transition of one particular robot named Avey from emotionless domestic servant to conflicted human companion. Two weeks prior to the long-anticipated arrival of the Singularity—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence—old robot models are recalled for the installation of a security upgrade that would allow the growing transhuman population to control them by way of fear tactics: a pain interpreter. This new feature introduces Avey to a cruel, unjust world, engendering a range of human emotions that include sadness, anger, compassion, and love. As robots across the globe collectively discover what it is to be human through the experience of suffering and longing, they inevitably begin to question their exploited existence. Will their joint uprising spoil the transhumans’ grand social experiment and release the robots from a life of servitude?

Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am.