Book Review: The Automaton by Ian Young
XR-345x awakens to find itself apparently the last of its kind. According to his holographic AI helper Holographic Automaton Navigation Console (Hank for short) humans left the surface of the earth around five thousand years ago, and the other automatons eventually followed suit. But an anomaly has arisen on Earth that requires hands-on action, so before the remnants of humanity take off for the starts, XR has been reactivated to deal with it.
The storage facility turns out to be in coastal Africa, near Scalia Prime, capital city of the Veryxian Confederation that became the world government after the collapse of North America’s societies. Hank directs XR to a larger facility, where all the artifacts humanity deemed worthy of preserving just in case are stored. According to Hank, XR needs to download certain information triggered by specific items within the facility. Oh, and they’re being pursued by Ghosts.
These memories turn out to be mostly connected to the Wing family, whose members participated in the history of the Automata (basically self-aware robots) from the initial vote to authorize building them to deal with an underpopulation crisis, through a bloody war, to humanity deciding to move on.
So this science fiction novel turns out to be a generational saga covering centuries of history. As such, it touches on a lot of ground. Whether automata have rights as sapient beings, and what that means after the humans have abused those rights. The ethics of technological advancement and biological research. Prejudice, forgiveness, and love. And of course family connections.
As XR studies its new memories, it develops a personality and begins to understand its purpose in existence.
As you might expect, the future history of the automata and the humans they were created to serve wind up echoing many moments in past history. It might have been a bit too on the nose to name one of the main villains of the story “Hayt” though.
One of the main “twists” of the story is easily figured out by the genre-savvy, though others require more thought to see coming. And the ending…I am pretty sure that’s not how it works, but it is a fitting coda.
I noticed a scattering of typos, but not as bad as some other small press books.
Content note: fantastic racism, murder and torture. Older teens should be able to handle it, but it’s aimed at a more experienced audience.
Overall, some interesting ideas with readable prose. Most of the characters are interesting enough for their portion of the story. Recommended for those who enjoy generational sagas and the “thinkier” side of science fiction.
