HOMELAND

Love’s sweeping future history chronicles the ascendancy of a widespread robot workforce as a machine-intelligence race arises to partner with humanity in space exploration.

The story opens in the late 21st century following a nuclear global war that frightened humankind into accepting a world government. The use of increasingly sophisticated robots in most professions cements the evolution of android-style machines and artificial intelligences into very convincing, practically immortal humanoid forms. As a result, the purely “human” element of society begins to dwindle in prominence. “Charles” is introduced by his developer as the first “Artinian,” an idealized human simulacrum who may well meet the definition of sentience (“Artinians...are our creation of sibling non-biological creatures, not some materialization of machine parts”). Fiercely ethical and affirming himself a faithful servant of man, Charles resists a “Channel Two” upgrade enabling full consciousness. “Candy” is an atypically inquisitive working-class waitressing robot who receives increasingly independent and flesh-like modifications as she seeks purpose. “Dr. Andrea” is a pioneering synthetic surgeon who, in a moment of existential crisis, flees her creators to become an off-the-grid designer of still more humanlike examples of machine-life. And “Paulon” is a truly rogue artificial superman, activated with complete Channel Two consciousness in emulation of a dawning human mind. Superior and scornful, he feels he owes the human species nothing. These entities, alongside long-lived biological characters (who fuse mentally, or “Imblend” with cooperative Artinians) attain pivotal positions in the paradigm-shift when Earth begins colonizing deep space—Homo sapiens being too fragile for the radiation-bathed cosmos. Love unrolls a 20-century timeline, taking readers from cybernetic to transhumanist to post-human epochs, introducing aliens and unspeakably genocidal schemes into the equation. Fans of Isaac Asimov’s famous robot-centric Elijah Baley novels should pay particular attention, even if the renowned Laws of Robotics are never reverently recited (a few piquant SF references that do make it in include Frankenstein and The Terminator). Echoing Asimov, Love prefers “soft” climaxes to crescendos of action and devastation; also like Asimov, he exhibits a keen intelligence (artificial or not) throughout the thoughtful pageant.

A compelling speculation on the divergent destinies of man and robot.