Set My Heart to A Billion

A recommendation from Cannonball Read by jomidi!

This book was not what I was expecting. I was expecting a book in the vein of All Systems Red and the accompanying books, because that is a book about a bot who develops…unwarranted feelings/empathy/care, and this seemed like a similarly set up premise and therefore something I would like.
But it was not, which I should have realized because books are not just derivatives of other books. Authors generally like to write new works.
Authors!
Are great!

…my attempt at language similar to the tone of this book aside, this was a lovely gem of a book and I’m really glad I read it. It actually isn’t that dissimilar from the aforementioned Murderbot series, in that you’re following along with the stream of consciousness of a robot who is slowly realizing that they’re more than what they “should” be. Like if all that confusion about reveries and consciousness that happened in Westworld (season 1? season 2? I literally had no idea what was going on in that show after the first season) was stripped of its trauma porn and sexposition, because as it were humans are not competent enough to run an entire expansive amusement park full of sentient robots. We couldn’t even remember our passwords.

The vague allusions to the apocalypse that got Jared the Dentist Bot to where they are, the bamboozlement he feels at pretty much 99% of what humans do, the slowly dawning realization that he’s going to be a feelings-driven bot from here on out, the not-at-all-implanted love for his mother, the smartest bestest scientist in the entire world…it’s all very well done.

Spoiler: And as the ending began to dawn on me–as I realized that we were too close to the ending for things to truly end in the bot/human utopia that Jared was attempting to create through the power of Art–I did, honestly, feel a bit sad and tearjerker-y. Would have generated at least 20-30 mls of tears!