Machine

Really enjoying this one so far–the descriptions of what it would be like to be a mind in a purely mechanical body are quite vivid. Also, it's got queer characters, and some naughty bits.

Turns out there are quite a few naughty bits.

Liked this book quite a bit. Pelland has some complex ideas to explore, and she touches on a lot of interesting concepts–I wish that she had explored them a little bit more in-depth, even. I would have edited out at least a few of the “a machine doesn't feel” lines, but other than that, an enjoyable read which got me to think quite a bit about minds and brains.

Celia Krajewski is unsure of how long she has to live. None of us do, really, but for Celia the matter is a bit more pressing, as she's recently discovered she carries a gene for a rare mutation that will eventually destroy her mind. She has an out, though; she can place her body in statis, transferring her mind and personhood to a bioandroid body so that she can continue living until a cure is found.

Death always demands payment, though, and Celia's attempt to cheat it comes with the cost of her marriage; her wife refuses to see Celia as the ‘real' Celia, claiming that to be with her robotic body would amount to infidelity. This starts Celia questioning exactly how human her new self is. Eventually, she starts to hurt herself, to remind herself of her humanity. To her surprise, she finds that she starts to like the pain. And that she's not the only bioandroid who feels that way.

While the science fictional elements of Machine are absolutely essential parts of it, they are not the central focus of it; instead, Pelland wisely chooses to focus her story on Celia's attempts to retain a feeling of humanity as she starts to lose many of the relationships with others that define who we are; our romantic relationships, friendships, hobbies and career choices are so often a part of our self-definition that to be stripped of them can remove that feeling of humanity from any of us, if only momentarily; to be stripped in that way while inside a biomechanical body that only reinforces those feelings of nonhumanism.

Beyond the character study of Celia, Machine also has some interesting things to say about the interplay of individual rights and collective good. Given the subject matter of the book, it would be very easy to think of Machine as a book that would argue that individual rights are always paramount, and the first-person narration that Celia provides definitely seems to support that. “Body autonomy”, as it is phrased in the book, is understandably important for all the mechanical characters, and it is the realization that she lacks that that drives Celia to make some of the choises that she does in the course of the story. However, as first-person narrators are inherently unreliable, it's important to look beyond Celia's opinion and see what's actually happening. The reality that we can observe when we look beyond Celia is that all of the crises that Celia faces throughout the book stem from others using their own bodily autonomy – their ‘free will', to use a somewhat loaded term – without regard to how those choices will impact others. The regularity with which that occurs doesn't seem to be coincidental, but rather seems to be a statement from the author on the need to balance one's own self-discovery and actualization with the knowledge of how that will affect others around them.

The human characters in Celia's story are fascinating and self-contradictory. Most of those that recognize that there is still humanity in her, or at least claim to, refuse ultimately to treat her as human, instead objectifying her and using her as a tool for their own ends. Within the moral framework of the story, this objectification is somewhat defensible – it could be argued, after all, that they're operating with the same desire for individualistic autonomy that Celia desires – but it is still ultimately counterproductive and serves only to increase Celia's feelings of separation and otherness from her new body.

Machine was, at times, a hard book to read. The emotional power of Pelland's writing left me breathless at a few points, and the depths that Celia is willing to go to prove her remaining humanity to herself will no doubt be shocking to some readers. The tragedy that sits at its core makes it a very rewarding read; Jennifer Pelland manages to put a very human and humanistic face on a subgenre that at times tries to flee from those descriptors.

(note: Apex Publications provided a copy of Machine for review).