Author: William Campbell Powell
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: WARTY!
This is a novel which needs to have its own expiration day. Just like the TV show The Lottery, the unoriginal plot is that of a population which has become largely infertile (for unknown reasons, as if we could believe that) yet despite all of our advances in genetics of the last two decades, the next thirty years is spent not in curing the infertility or in developing clones or parental hybrids, but in developing improbably advanced and prohibitively expensive robots known as teknoids, which are stand-ins for the children which parents now cannot have - robots which are forcibly removed from your life when they "turn eighteen" Insane much?
How this technology advanced so rapidly to such an amazingly high degree (while all other technology stagnated over that same time period) is a complete mystery, but this is fiction after all! Maybe I should be nicer: William Campbell Powell hails from Sheffield, England - yes, that "Sheffield steel" town - which is only some 20 miles north of where I was born. This novel is set in England.
The author projects way too much of himself into the story though, and that was one of my biggest problems with suspension of disbelief. It would have been fine if the story were about a man the same age as the author, but it's not! It's about an eleven-year-old girl who is slowly transitioning into her teens, so the 70's theme park and the constant references to bands from the sixties and seventies SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK. Period. Why would such a young girl in 2049 reference, for example, The Blues Bothers, a movie from 1980 - that is 70 years before her time?
The author tries to hide this under the weak claim that no new bands have got together in the last thirty years! Bullshit. The bands of Tania's era are all tribute bands - but none of these bands seem to reference bands from any era other than the sixties and seventies. Why? This struck me as nothing more than laziness on the part of the author: he was too lazy to research bands that an eleven-year-old might like and simply used his own favorites instead. Pathetic.
It's no spoiler to reveal that the main character is one of these teknoids. She learns that around thirty pages in (this novel starts on page nine for some reason), and that's long after we've realized it, of course. For the sake of cut-rate tension (and for no other reason) robots, which are in the majority, are treated as second class citizens - if it's known that they're robots. But how could people not know, given the world which this author creates?
Evidently no one has ever come up with a means of detecting who is and who isn't robotic in his world, despite the fact that we have electronic technology here and now which could do such a thing! Also, for no reason, there's appalling and uninterrupted bullying. The teachers at Tania's school appear unaware (or uncaring) of this, or perhaps they're just really stupid, as indeed they are in pretty much all schools in YA novels for some obscure reason.
So we have yet another dystopian YA novel featuring a girl as the main protagonist. The author apparently doesn't know that it's not illegal to tell a story in the third person, so we get the farcical suspension-of-disbelief-destroying conceit that an eleven-year-old can not only write as though she's an adult (coincidentally of the same age as the novel's author, with the same predilections), but that she can recall conversations word for word and has an almost eidetic grasp of the previous day's or week's events in order to record such details?
This problem is compounded by the fact that it's written as a diary which makes it even more unrealistic. After pooh-pooh-ing the idea of employing a Victorian "dear dairy" format, Tania then goes on to do exactly that, addressing the diary to Mister Zoe, a hypothesized alien archaeologist in the distant future. The diary format doesn't work. It's far too detailed in parts and completely missing great gaps of many months if not years in other parts. In short it's a prop, indeed, a malaprop. which stands out so garishly on this stage that it detracts from the live action going on around it.
My first guess was that this "Zoe" alien archaeologist character was actually Tania herself because in the distant future "he" (we don't know the alien's gender) is reflecting on her diary. Shades of Stephen Spielberg's movie AI with a small side of Millennium Man! This alien thinks and plans and imagines just as though he's human though, dear reader!
Other than that, and for all my complaints, the story began rather well, but it went quickly downhill as the alien showed up, interleaved with the diary chapters offering brief and ridiculous comments and observations. I quickly learned to skip those and I never missed them. That part should have been excised completely. The story progressively became worse after Tania discovered that she was a robot. It would have made a more surprising story if she were not, since it's so obvious from the start that this is the way the author was going. Indeed, not a thing in this novel is surprising or startling, including the ending.
The diary isn't the only thing in which there are large holes; the plot, too, suffers this problem. The first issue is that no one seems at all concerned that the human race is on the verge of extinction. Oh look we have humanoid robots, so no worries, mate! I couldn’t swallow that. Not a bit of it. Also we’re told nothing of the riots that took place: what started them, what, exactly, they were about, how and why they finally ended. All we get is melodramatic intimations that we don't want to see those again.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that there is no explanation offered as to how this system with the robots is supposed to work. We're just expected to buy them as is (so to speak!). Yes, we're told that baby robots are available, and you get a free upgrade every two years (to a total of eight upgrades), but what's the point?
If people are largely infertile, isn't this a dead give-away?! Who would want to take care of a robot baby? Does it eat? If not, it's a robot! Does it pee and poop? If not, it's a robot! Does it get sick? If not, it's a robot! Does it suddenly go from two weeks old to two years old? If so, it's a robot! Yeah, we're told these robots process regular food, but it makes no sense. How could a real parent bond, in any meaningful way, with a baby robot? It's neither plausible nor realistic that people would simply get on with their lives, taking robot babies home, and pretending that nothing is wrong with this life.
How does a woman who has never exhibited a pregnant belly to the world magically show up with a baby? How does a woman who produces no milk breast-feed it, and why would she? It's a robot! Does this little person ever get bitten by mosquitoes? If not, it's a robot! Does it get no sicknesses whatsoever? If not it's a robot! Does it need no vaccinations for school or travel? If not, it's a robot! How is there any way that this can be kept a secret for any significant length of time from everyone?
I don't get how the aging thing works, either. We're told that the robots have to go back to the manufacturer to be aged - they come back in a slightly more mature body. How does this work with early childhood and teenage growth spurts when you get only eight renewals? Indeed, how does it work at all? The author conveniently ignores all of these problems, including the big one: This is rent-a-bot! The robots must be returned at age eighteen, we're told, although we're not told why. Why would any family want that? Why would society tolerate this destruction of these tecknoids which are for all intents and purposes, people, especially to their 'parents' (and assuming the bonding problem could have been overcome)? Why would the robots not rebel?
This part of the novel, where people have to be 'recycled' at a certain age, is nothing more than a rip-off of Logan's Run. Actually it's more like a Biblical fable in that these robots are given life for a short time; then, if they're good little robots, they die and go to robo-heaven.
What about sexuality? The robot must be made to appear perfectly human, so what's to stop pedophiles 'adopting' one? Does this happen? It's never mentioned. What if someone 'rapes' a robot - do they get the charges dropped? Given how abusive people are to robots, is it even considered rape? There is so much to explore in a world like this, but the author ignores all of that in favor of relating a tedious and petty tale of an uninteresting girl. He expects us, instead, to buy his narrow, blinkered view of this so-called world, where the author pretty much admits to having done none of the heavy lifting to make it work, or to flesh it out.
What about sexuality in general? If pretty much no one can get pregnant, wouldn't that declare open day on rampant sex? Wouldn't everyone be doing it - particularly the teens? This isn't even mentioned, let alone included as a feature worth exploring in this world. This struck me as very odd given the writer's penchant for sixties and seventies throw-backs. What, no new era of "free love" and disease-free sex dawns here?
What about puberty? There are hormonal changes in both boys and girls and which lead to significant body changes, and to mood and mentality changes. How is this handled with robots which are upgraded only at two-year intervals? Tania doesn't get an upgrade from age eleven until they suddenly, and at her own request, revamp her at age fifteen - a four year gap - and also a huge, unexplained jump in her diary. Until then, she looks exactly the same age for four straight years - and no one notices?!
How does this society cope with mechanical issues and breakdowns? It's never mentioned! How come no one ever puts two years and two years together and figures out that persons X, Y, & Z are robots because they always get 'sick' and are hospitalized at the same time every two years? How can a poor family possibly afford these expensive, sophisticated robots? None of this works and the author doesn't even mention it in passing, let alone actually explore it. What a tragically missed opportunity for some great writing!
None of the pretence (that no one can tell which people are biological and which are robotic) makes any sense. That's the real fiction we're being sold here. There is of course, a multiplicity of other issues. For example, the birth rate began its plummet in 2017, a whole generation before the story begins, but there appear to be no relatively young people around! Why is it that everyone seems really old? Why is no one starting to panic about the fate of the human race? Are we really looking at some sort of technological Soylent Green in this world?
The pure bullshit doesn't end there either. When Tania decides to look up population trends, she discovers that the data cut off at 2040, almost a decade ago (to her). When she tries to enter a more recent date for an up-to-date picture, she gets an error message telling her that she's not authorized and suddenly the police show up with blue lights flashing to lecture her about inappropriate use of the TeraNet (the "kewl' word used for the Internet here), and issue her a legal warning? Seriously?
She didn't break-in anywhere. She didn't hack into a system where she was not allowed. She accessed no forbidden data, she simply 'Googled' something and got no results. All she did was ask and was told "No," yet the police show up at her door immediately? BULLSHIT! This is amateur writing at its worst. I don't have a problem with authors who write like this if they make some sort of half-way competent attempt to explain why things are a certain way, but when you write things that way and don't even pretend that you can explain, and you write like it doesn't even matter that it isn't discussed or explained, that's a classical sign of bad writing.
It's a criminal activity to look at a government website? Why the frick and frack is the website even available on the web then? If she ever makes another mistake, she will be deactivated, she's told! Good god this is bad writing! Why not just name her 'Eve' and say she was taking bytes from an Apple computer?!
As ridiculous as this is, it wouldn't have been half so inane if she hadn't immediately got on her phone after that, and talked openly about what she did with her friend John, who openly admitted that he could hack into the system. So the powers-that-be minutely monitor the web, but not the phones?! Bye-bye credibility. Hello another lousy dystopian fiction with a young female protagonist. I guess I should just be glad it's not a trilogy, huh?
Some of this is written like it actually was an eleven-year-old who penned it. There are parts of the story where significantly new things magically appear without rhyme or reason. For example, and out of the blue, Tania decides she wants to play bass guitar, and suddenly she's an expert in all things musical, talking like a veteran musician and exhibiting detailed musical knowledge without ever having been shown to follow any learning curve to get there. Let me guess - the author plays bass?
That's a much as I want to rant about over this novel (and not in a good way), but it's not worth more of my time than this. About half-way through I gave up on it because I could not stand the boredom, so no, I cannot recommend this novel. It's warty!
