Little Robot (book review)
This week I was on my coffee session with more or less the regular setting. Movies came up and we got stuck debating Passengers (2016).
T: Oh did you watch that sci-fi movie where two people are stuck in a spaceship? What was it called again … ah yes, the Passengers.
M: Is that the one with Jennifer Lawrence?
T: Yes!
A: But that’s not sci-fi tho.
T: What do you mean? It goes on in space does it not?
A: It might be so, but mainly that movie is a romance.
T: You’re nitpicking again.
Yes I might be … so here we are. To me, Little Robot by Alex Beyman (@alexbeyman), is not technically a romance or sci-fi but more or less captures the political and social system we currently reside in. Basically what it portrays and focuses on is humanity and human nature.
The blurb:
A misanthropic roboticist finds his loyalties tested when the world erupts around him into a war between humans and machines. Neither side knows what to make of the unexpected romance that blossoms amid the carnage and devastation.
I read to escape and this book didn’t let me. My personal train of thought (you can skip this part if choose to):
It is funny how for the first 30% of the book I related with the main character. I share his thoughts, philosophy, I talk with my cats, my Roomba, my washing machine and my car and to top it off have a white knight syndrome (which never did me any good). In a way I harbor the idea that the human being is no more and less than the rest of the nature. But at this age I can’t pin point anymore what is in the human nature. Maybe because we keep on adding rules and morals. But I do believe that if you take all this away. Strip away all the luxury we would eventually also strip all our human morals. Nature only allows the best, the smartest, the strongest, the fastest, etc. to survive. So no … I do not share the philosophy of many that the morality elevates us - makes us better. I think it makes us better for the coexistence in sociality but if you take that away, by the rules of the nature we do not better ourselves. We are crippling ourselves. Nature supports egoism and kills the weak. This of course is all hypothetical and hypocritical. So easy to reach philosophical conclusions on a full belly.
If you were to dig deep enough, human consciousness would turn out to be smoke and mirrors.
Book progress:
The buildup takes approx. 30% of the book. What follows is about 20% of gripping action and development. I was engrossed. Then we came on the 50% mark and well … The invisible grip let go. To me the love part came almost out of the blue. Well that was worded wrong. I predicted it (the story hinted it) but felt there wasn’t enough development. The simplest way I can explain it is – it wasn’t a woman’s porn. A woman’s porn works on tease and retract. So when the contact does happen you are relived and happy for it to happen. Otherwise it’s just mechanics. So I felt like there should be more concrete foundations in the start or even better for the romance to progress through the whole book and boom at the very end. But as it was I found it a bit insta-love and like a cog in the wheels. Something that had to happen for the progress of the book. I was not emotionally invested.
The final 50% of the book was more or less cogs and wheels too. Situations and people that all raised questions and views of human nature. Views of political, human/moral and religion features, racial inclusion, gender politics, etc.
So to say … the book had me till 50% and lost me after. It felt a bit forced. Things to happen for the sake of getting the point across the room. Of course there are still scenes and situations where I was moved. I actually had teary eyes on an occasion or two (fine it was three).
World buildup: No complaints. I like.
Writing style: Again the dictionary came in handy. But in a way it suited the main character so much I can hardly say this was a downside but quite the opposite. It added to the character of the protagonist.
All-round rating: 4 stars. Not the books fault if it isn’t a simple smut or sci-fi I want it to be.
1 day, 18h and 4 min till Wildfire release. Ilona Andrews fans know what I'm talking bout. Do you have a book recomendation? Don't be shy ... Drop it in the comment section.
What a thoughtful review. There were in fact a few "tease and retract" moments where the protagonist pushes Helper away, feeling it's ethically irresponsible for them to have a relationship (literally pushing her hand away in the back of the car for example, briefly trying to talk her out of sex on the military base, their big fight near the end) but evidently I didn't play that up enough.
I wonder what you thought of the section where they're trying to revive Helper using the simulation software, and it seems as if it has failed. Was that too mechanical as well? I intended it to be tense and emotional.
...i dont have a recipe but i do know it felt to fast when the love scene poped up. For me what it lacked is more emotional development (regarding their relationship) from the main character. Hard to explain .... but it just wasn't enough. I felt like I still looked on Helper as a thing and not as a person he could love. Now since i cried when Odie died (i actually just got teary eyes again) that means u managed to portrait him more then a thing to me. I got emotionaly invested. And I cant say why that worked out and failed with Helper (since Helper got more book time). Just think he wasn't conflicted enough. Like his desire wasn't obvious enough. Yes he showed apreciacion and when she got her new body I could tell he liked it. Or maybe the fault (if i can call it that) lay in Helper herself. I know i have no issues bonding with unusual characters since R. Lee Smith made me fall in love in her lizard and a bug...but she takes her sweet time (her books reach to 1000 pages)...so by the end of the book you forget that he is a lizard and percive him as equal....and by the end of the week when thoughts cooled down I sat there thinking "goddamit I can belive I was turned on by a lizard". She more or less writes erotica ... but i dont percieve her books as erotica, like i don't percive that passangers is a sci-fi movie.
I also loved the hospital scene...that felt horrendously real.
As for the revival scene...yes, a tad mechanical. You have to know that some people are just not that smart as you lol. So when you get to info dumps you have to tread carefully.
"My washing machine broke. It's electromehanical timer that regulates the sequence of washing and extraction process went dead."
"My washing machine broke. The electromehanical timer went dead."
What happens is ... I start taxing my brain. I start focusing on details and functions and forget the main picture. The washing machine is dead. She's was dying. You also have to know that while he was runing the simulation I was half thinking he'll make it happen.
I did open the watergate after tho. When it didn't work out and with the burial scene.
Invaluable feedback here, thank you. I suppose part of the difficulty is that I'm autistic, so my emotional development isn't as far along as it should be for my age, and I've also had very few relationships. They say "write what you know", yet I went and tried to write romance, haha.
I cannot conclude that, because it would be pompous, and a blank check to assume going forward that whenever people don't understand me, it's because they're dumb. That's not a useful attitude to cultivate.
I felt that way while writing it, and feel desperate to see it in movie form now.
By the way, every vintage robot in the story is real. They are described accurately, every one of them actually existed at one point. Here's Odie. This is Hero 1. Here's Modulus, RB5X, etc.
Let me rephrase that then. People have different interests and areas where they shine. Like emotions might not be your strong suit, science is not realy mine. Now while I appreaciate science - to much info fries my brain trying to decipher the small peaces and lose the bigger picture. Not saying I'm stupid...just that my "smrt" shines in some other areas, whereas yours might not. :)
Oh i had no idea. Thats great! Just watched em with my neice. They scared her lol. I imagined Odie even bigger.