91av

Sierra Greer (The Borough Press (UK), available now; Mariner Books (US), on sale 19 March)

ANNIE BOT is the story of a robot who lives with her human owner, Doug, in a New York apartment. I opened the novel with low hopes, because the idea of a robot learning to be human, then chafing at its bonds, seemed a bit old hat. How wrong I was. Right from the first page, the book is coruscating, unexpected and subtle. I picked it up idly one evening and felt compelled to stay up very late to finish it.

Annie is a beautiful sex toy, designed to pass as human. There are telltale signs that she is artificial, however. She mostly keeps her temperature at 75°F (24°C) to save on battery; she has to warm herself up when Doug wants sex. She recharges herself through a charge point in one heel. She can make a show of eating and drinking to pass as a normal woman, but afterwards she vomits to avoid damage to her insides. When she goes for her regular maintenance check-ups, the technicians inspect her memory and health, but they also slim her down or make her breasts bigger, whatever Doug wants. We quickly understand that Annie has no rights at all.

Doug has set Annie to “cuddle bunny” mode, which makes her good at anticipating his sexual needs, but less good at cleaning his apartment. He also has her switched to “autodidactic” mode, which means she is sentient. Doug mostly likes her this way; it makes her less predictable. Of course, if he wants to flip the sentience switch off, get her memory wiped or just put her in a closet for weeks on end, he can do that any time.

What makes the book unputdownable is that Annie Bot is a wonderful character. She is whole-hearted and innocent, but also a fast learner, super-curious, an enthusiastic liar and great fun to be with. And the fact that Doug can do anything he likes to her at any moment means that she is in at least low-level peril on an almost sentence-by-sentence basis. Poor Annie!

She is also a brilliantly unreliable narrator. Her programming means that she doesn’t (initially) question her life in Doug’s apartment. Nor does she object to having sex with Doug whenever he likes. Pleasing him is hard-coded into her and she suffers physical distress if he is angry with her.

Of course, you, the reader, may quickly learn to loathe Doug. I know I did! He is self-pitying, mean, hair-triggered and selfish, while also having a very high opinion of himself. He isn’t irredeemable, perhaps, but he is certainly not great, despite being, in his own mind, the perfect owner-boyfriend for Annie. If things go wrong between them, he definitely believes he is the victim.

Interestingly, the story works well on a number of levels. It is obviously a very clever exploration of AI and the ethics of treating anything even vaguely sentient as a tool for your own pleasure. That makes it political and timely. It is also a very human novel about emotional abuse. At times, it offers quite a funny portrait of a terrible relationship, particularly when Doug and Annie see a couples therapist together. It is also the coming-of-age story of a young woman, albeit one who was born only two years ago and has a flap on her back for maintenance.

Sierra Greer, the novel’s author, is an excellent writer, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that this literary “debut” isn’t really a debut. She has written several other books under another name.

Anyway, this is a delicious and thought-provoking book. Free the Annie Bots now!

Emily also recommends…

Iain M. Banks (Hachette)

For robots that are basically the opposite of Annie Bot, I recommend anything in Banks’s Culture series. No one does innocent-looking-drone-that-is-actually-lethal better. I think this book, by the way, is the best entry point to the series for new readers.

Emily H. Wilson is a former editor of 91av. Gilgamesh, the second novel in her Sumerians trilogy, is out later this year. You can find her at emilyhwilson.com, or follow her on X at @emilyhwilson and on Instagram at @emilyhwilson1