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A review by beatitude
Electric Blues by Shaun O. McCoy
3.0
Note: I received a free copy of this book, with a request for an honest review
Electric Blues is a story about an obsolete, depressed robot, whose programmer forces him to start helping people. Through it he grows and learns to be a little more human.
It's a decent little short story. It explores the question of what it means to be human, and it deals with poverty and old age, which sounds quite heavy, but it manages to maintain a good balance between light and dark. It's funny, heartwarming, and fairly light on the sci-fi.
The story alternates between chapters from the robot's POV, and excerpts from a trial that happened some years before the narrative, which granted robots basic rights. It's through these trial transcripts that the 'what it means to be human' question is primarily explored. Although these chapters gave some interesting and necessary backstory, and I like the courtroom drama format, they were my least favourite chapters. The exploration of sentience and selfhood was too superficial and simplistic, and the scientists and philosophers put on the stand gave the kind of answers I would expect of a first year university student. They didn't reflect the actual debates around the topic of sentience, a topic which has been considered deeply for thousands of years. It's fine to gloss over all of it, because it's a pretty heavy topic, but if you're deliberately inserting a discussion of it into your narrative then don't explore it with the superficiality of a high school philosophy class.
(But perhaps I was put off by some of the science myths that were aired as fact in the courtroom scenes, such as the claim that all mules are infertile!)
Putting aside the whole sentience debate, the rest of the story was solid. I liked the subplot with the old lady the most; it had an interesting ambiguity about it. Arty, the robot, does his best to 'fix' her life, but there are aspects of her situation he can't truly grasp (although as readers we can), and the whole thing is kind of bittersweet. Some things can't be fixed, and regrets are one of them.
I listened to the audiobook, which was well read by Gabrielle Olexa. I'm not sure why they picked a female narrator when the robot was referred to as 'he', but it actually worked really well, emphasising that gender is really unimportant for a robot and only something we impose on them in an attempt to make them seem more human to us. Olexa did a great job of capturing a robot's flat affect without sounding monotonous. I would have liked a bit more variety in the courtroom dialogue, but overall it worked well. She kept me hooked to the end. I won't be re-reading it, but it was great to pass an hour with.
Electric Blues is a story about an obsolete, depressed robot, whose programmer forces him to start helping people. Through it he grows and learns to be a little more human.
It's a decent little short story. It explores the question of what it means to be human, and it deals with poverty and old age, which sounds quite heavy, but it manages to maintain a good balance between light and dark. It's funny, heartwarming, and fairly light on the sci-fi.
The story alternates between chapters from the robot's POV, and excerpts from a trial that happened some years before the narrative, which granted robots basic rights. It's through these trial transcripts that the 'what it means to be human' question is primarily explored. Although these chapters gave some interesting and necessary backstory, and I like the courtroom drama format, they were my least favourite chapters. The exploration of sentience and selfhood was too superficial and simplistic, and the scientists and philosophers put on the stand gave the kind of answers I would expect of a first year university student. They didn't reflect the actual debates around the topic of sentience, a topic which has been considered deeply for thousands of years. It's fine to gloss over all of it, because it's a pretty heavy topic, but if you're deliberately inserting a discussion of it into your narrative then don't explore it with the superficiality of a high school philosophy class.
(But perhaps I was put off by some of the science myths that were aired as fact in the courtroom scenes, such as the claim that all mules are infertile!)
Putting aside the whole sentience debate, the rest of the story was solid. I liked the subplot with the old lady the most; it had an interesting ambiguity about it. Arty, the robot, does his best to 'fix' her life, but there are aspects of her situation he can't truly grasp (although as readers we can), and the whole thing is kind of bittersweet. Some things can't be fixed, and regrets are one of them.
I listened to the audiobook, which was well read by Gabrielle Olexa. I'm not sure why they picked a female narrator when the robot was referred to as 'he', but it actually worked really well, emphasising that gender is really unimportant for a robot and only something we impose on them in an attempt to make them seem more human to us. Olexa did a great job of capturing a robot's flat affect without sounding monotonous. I would have liked a bit more variety in the courtroom dialogue, but overall it worked well. She kept me hooked to the end. I won't be re-reading it, but it was great to pass an hour with.