When I saw Madeline Ashby's vN on Angry Robot’s list of up-coming books to review, I admit to being captivated initially by the title itself. I didn’t make the connection to the “von Neumann” idea until I read the blurb, because in general robot fiction doesn't interest me. But recently, I’ve been getting into some of the best sci-fi movies from the 1970’s and 1980’s, and guess what? Robots. From Alien to Blade Runner and beyond, there are android companions everywhere. Some of them are murderous, some of them are genteel and well-meaning. This weird kick has been an excellent lead-up to Madeline Ashby’s vN, and frankly, they make the novel into a really fresh experience that reads a bit like a love letter to the best of the android-toting sci-fi of years gone by.


Without having experienced vN’s spiritual predecessors, I think I would have missed a ton of the allusions and nods the author makes throughout the novel. And that would have been a shame, because, to be real simple about it, Ashby takes the best of what those former movies established and encapsulates them into a creepy, uncomfortable road-trip adventure that rolls right along with the strictures of the classics and builds where they left off. It’s one of the best experiences I’ve had with a book all year, and it kept me up thinking about the unasked question about synthetic life: once we create it… what do we do with it?

Enter Amy. She’s a five-year old vN, or von Neumann machine—that is, a machine that can self-reproduce. Amy is an artificially intelligent synthetic child kept deliberately pint-sized by her parents via a very strict diet that doesn’t allow her systems enough resources to grow and fulfill the main purpose of a vN. This is her father’s way of raising a “real” daughter with his vN wife, Charlotte. Their plan is to follow this almost anorexic diet, gradually allowing Amy to grow up as a natural daughter would, until she is an identical replica of her mother. It rings a bit of the “extreme parenting” that we see reports on all the time: parents attempting to perfect their children and their childhood experience by micromanaging until the cows come home. The logic is creepy, familiar, and, well, it’s understandable, because Amy’s father reads as a genuine father figure.

Since this world operates around (and rather hinges on) the vN, I’d like to study them for a second. In Ashby’s future, vN are second-class citizens who walk among us “Chimps” doing the work we don’t want to do, making many of us slightly uncomfortable, and, yes, helping us with the worst of our sinful urges. Like Pedophilia. Yep. They were created by a synergy of scientific revolution, military research, and of all things, religious fundamentalism. According to Ashby’s future history, a Billy Graham-like mega pastor helps fund the creation of the vN models because he believes that the people left over after the Christian Rapture will need someone to love them. Strange as it sounds, that’s the way it happens, and it works in the novel. In order to prevent a Terminator-like future, and to ensure the vN care for their fleshy charges, each vN is also bound with a “failsafe” that is closely reminiscent of an Asimov robot: they cannot cause a human to suffer, or witness it without trying to help. However, just seeing humans suffering is enough to “fry” many vNs’ brains. This is a constant point of contention, as Amy’s failsafe is totally non-functional, but the vN she travels with are still affected by it. It provides an interesting conflict throughout the novel, and helps keep the tension strong throughout.

In part because of the failsafe, and in part because of their very nature as artificially intelligent occupants of the uncanny valley, vN are mistrusted by many, pitied by some, and despised by others. Through Amy, we get to experience a little of each. In a way, I think the human-vN social climate is a comment by Ashby on xenophobic inclinations in the current global climate. Those vN who aren’t fortunate enough to have a home or job live as “fugitives,” raiding electronic store dumpsters and high-tech garbage dumps for the necessary silicon, carbon, and electron-saturated battery material to survive on.

This is the kind of life that Amy lives through the novel. She’s very much on the run and under the gun, and her trial is a difficult one to read; the novel doesn’t hesitate to examine the ruination of childhood by starvation, abuse, and, though it’s done subtly, the predominant introduction of sexuality to childhood. These parts of the novel are tastefully written, but still unsettling. Especially when we meet the minister-pedophile who “owns” children-stage vN.

It’s important to remember that Ashby’s character, Amy, is only 5 years old (mentally), but she is 20-something physically, which causes a huge disconnect for her with male characters. She’s still uncomfortable, and in many circumstances, unaware, of her own physique and allure. Through the novel she does begin to learn about herself as a woman (or female-oriented vN, I suppose), which makes for an interesting arc. However, what struck me as the most interesting facet of the character is that she is one of the oldest vN we meet. Amy is 5, but with the exception of the vN in her own clade (i.e., vN Family), she tends to be older than the others she meets. That said, she’s also much less intelligent, due in part to the lack of experience, and in part to the fact that most vN can grow up to adult size within a year if they aren’t on the restricted diet. The effects of her restricted childhood haunt her all the way through the novel, which I think is another comment by the author, and if so, it’s a wise one.

Speaking of haunting, a major feature of the novel is the fact that Amy’s psychotic grandmother lives in her head on a corrupt fragment of her memory. How did she get there? Amy eats her alive. This occupation lends to some funny banter, but the majority of Portia’s interruptions are sinister and hateful, and the moments where her grandmother manages to possess Amy’s body are terrible and frantic in equal measure. It is a testament to Ashby’s writing talent that she can sell the possessions so well. More than anything, it made the novel for me, because the Portia-possession is a great example of a sci-fi writer taking a superstitious phenomenon and giving it a place within the realm of unrealized possibility.

The copy I read was an ARC sent to me in March, and obviously there will be a number of changes to the language in the intervening time before launch, but one of the things that stood out to me as a proper disconnect was that Ashby writes with British English, but the novel is set in America. Maybe I’m being picky, as I’ve read plenty of novels in American English set in other countries, but it struck me as weird. Also, I couldn’t really pin down when the novel was set. It’s clearly near-future, but unlike Edge, which was set somewhere in the next decade, vN must be set within the next century. I would have liked to know, but it isn’t crucial by any means.

I’m about done with the novel, and as of yet I haven’t been disappointed. Ashby’s style conforms to what I expect from an Angry Robot book: great use of modern technology pushed a decade (or more) into the future, combined with things yet out of our reach and wrapped up with politicized social commentary and filled with alien situations that feel uncomfortably close to tomorrow.

If you haven’t read an ARB novel, Ashby’s would be a great one to start with. It’s a grim, fast-paced cyberpunk adventure into the heart of the “Other,” who/whatever that is, and its unremitting examination of the uncanny and uncomfortable will keep you thinking hard about the human relation to technology and creation itself. Grab it.