Rachael Eyre's Blog - Posts Tagged "love-and-robotics"

Writing Love and Robotics has arguably been the most complicated, exhausting and rewarding process of my life. Nothing has been simple or conventional - apt, really, for a story about a love affair between a washed up gentleman adventurer and an android sex symbol.

After completing The Revenge of Rose Grubb, I wanted to mix it up yet again and write a lesbian time travel romance. While I still think it has a decent plot and characters, and may well return to it at a later date, the time wasn't right (no pun intended). You know if a story's working, even in the early stages, and this was failing to come to life. I shelved it and started to sketch out other ideas.

One of them was about a paranormal investigator who got herself into all kinds of hi jinks. Again, it was a serviceable idea, but I couldn't get excited about it. Her girlfriend acted as a butler cum chauffeur for her uncle, an eccentric retired explorer. In one of the subplots he would be blackmailed for his relationship with a younger man.

At some point I realised I was more interested in the secondary characters and their forbidden affair, and made them my focus. I've always loved adventure stories based on quasi romantic friendships between men, and found their tacked on marriages to women we hardly see insulting. I'm not suggesting that devoted male duos like Holmes and Watson are couples, but wouldn't it make a great story if they were? I thought I would tackle such a relationship but make the subtext text. I could even bring in the apparent purple wedding and have one of them forced to marry.

I freely admit that when I first imagined Josh, he wasn't a robot, but a vague immortal. The more I mulled it over, I saw this wasn't good enough. Thanks to Twilight and its imitators, love and sex with vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night are no longer taboo. I briefly considered making him an angel, but thankfully discarded this hideous idea. It was only when I noticed the public debate about advances in robotics - and moral guardians' morbid prurience whenever the subject is raised - that I found my theme. If Josh was a robot, that could prompt fascinating questions about love and identity.

Equal marriage still hadn't been legalised when I started writing; I won't deny that it coloured the narrative, not least the upsetting insistence from various authorities that my nine year relationship was unnatural and unreal. This is why I've resisted attempts to turn it into a straight romance - there are enough of those in the world already.

The original starting point was surely the trials of Oscar Wilde. I discovered him as an outed, self loathing teen; the thought that somebody could be imprisoned for his sexuality was barbaric. What bothered me most was the awfulness of his boyfriend Bosie - if you're going to be sacrificed on the altar of love, it should at least be worth it.

Next time I'll look at influences and inspirations. Exploring a brand new genre has proved quite the eye opener!

(Incidentally this was written in the middle of the Lancaster blackout. We were using tea lights in our Georgian attic room and the air ambulance kept zipping overhead - talk about post apocalyptic).

As previously discussed, it took a while for the main elements of Love and Robotics to fall into place. Even once I'd decided upon characters, plot and intentions, there was a significant hurdle: I wasn't familiar with the genre. At all.

There are two main strands of robot fiction. There's the notion that robots possess a cold, infinitely superior intellect, and understandably wish to conquer their human overlords. The second, more fruitful strand is that whatever their beginnings, robots can break their programming and experience emotions. Although Love and Robotics clearly belongs to the second category, I drew upon the ideas of the first, such as Asimov's oft quoted Laws. In the world of the story, artificials have to obey the Robotics Code. Every time Josh breaks one it's a conscious effort, and he awaits punishment.

I'm ashamed to say that when I started writing I hadn't seen either of the Terminator films, and reasoned this was as valid an excuse as any. Though you're unlikely to find a more pessimistic view of robotic capabilities, the first film is a fantastic blend of genres: sci fi meets thriller meets action. The obligatory romance doesn't feel as shoehorned as usual as it serves a crucial purpose: Kyle Reese needs to go back in time to father John Connor. The second film introduces the concept of a "good" Terminator and achieves moments of real pathos.

During my research I learned that Karel Capek had coined the word 'robot', or mechanical slave, for his play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots); where better to look? Though stilted and undeniably dated, the play has several points of interest. The characters aren't robots as you or I know them, but organic, highly convincing humanoids. A maniacal robot with a vision overthrows the humans - trope 1. Two of the robots fall in love, fostering hope for the future - trope 2.

My next goal was to find a story with a proper romance between a human and a robot. A novel with great ideas but squandered potential is The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson, one of my main inspirations. The first section - cranky lesbian Billie falls for gorgeous robot Spike - is funny, insightful and moving. Unfortunately the rest fails to live up to this promise.

A certain sci fi award winner, which shall remain nameless, had been touted as a triumph, a relationship between a human and a robot being one of its components. Unfortunately it was an unpalatable mix of rape fantasy and racism, and I abandoned it in disgust. I tried again, with a recently published YA offering, but found I couldn't believe in the central romance or the dystopia it depicted. The protagonist was a whiny, passive dead weight and I didn't care what happened to her.

I was beginning to grow disillusioned. Had I chosen the wrong genre? If the book focused too much on science, the love story was lost; if I disregarded the science and flung myself into the romance, it'd read like chick lit. Did I even have the credentials to write this book? My more technically minded friends were adamant that whatever a deluded human might project, no robot could form a genuine emotional attachment. I was ready to jack it in when I encountered Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover.

I shan't claim it's a work of genius, because it's not. The tale of a shy young debutante who risks everything to run away with a robot, it had two vital ingredients: in Silver, the eponymous robot, a hero you could conceivably fall in love with, and a relationship you rooted for. It made me see that believable human/robot romance was possible and what I might achieve with my more ambitious project.

Next time I'll look at taboo busting and what everyone imagines when you use the phrase "a love story with robots".

For the record: I never set out to bust taboos. I created the characters, then wove a story around them. I honestly believed that in a time of purported equality, a romance between a man and a male identified robot wouldn't be controversial.

I soon learned otherwise. Practically the first thing people say to me, after hearing a thrifty synopsis, is: "Wouldn't it work better as a straight couple?" When I ask them to justify this dubious piece of reasoning, they duck behind phrases such as 'mainstream' and 'commercial'. Few are willing to admit to their own homophobia.

Another quibble is that Alfred would have made a brilliant 'strong woman' character. Although I understand why they might think this, he sauntered into my head as a man, and I don't see why I should overhaul him to fill a quota. My stories are chocka with tough women already.

As previously mentioned, I always saw the anti robot lobby as analogous to the anti gay lobby. They make the same hysterical assertions and use religion to back their arguments - generally a sign that somebody's losing. Since equal marriage seemed impossibly remote in 2011, I wanted to put a gay relationship front and centre. There is no gay equivalent to Jane and Rochester, Meggie and Ralph, even Bella and Edward. To further underline the point, the beta couple are Alfred's niece Gwyn and her on-off girlfriend Pip.

As far as I'm concerned, any romance worthy of the name should feature a healthy sprinkling of sex. The days of a coy 'dot dot dot' are long gone; you need to prove your lovers are compatible, and where is that better demonstrated than the bedroom? My aim was to create love scenes that not only illustrate the connection between the couple, but - hopefully - make the reader hot and bothered as well.

Problem is, put the word 'love' anywhere near 'robots' and you're in for a world of nudge nudge, snicker snicker. One colleague had a Gay Robot routine he'd wheel out, complete with staccato voice. It seems that while people have no trouble imagining red hot sex with angels, demons and aliens, they struggle to do so with a robot. Even when I insisted that Josh resembles an incredibly beautiful man, they still pictured a dodgy Transformers slash fic. Another chum used the phrase "living dildo" - thanks for that.

It can be seen that I had two assumptions to overcome. Firstly, the idea that a gay relationship is somehow less relatable. Everybody's been in love with someone 'unsuitable', whether it's a bad boy or someone of the same sex. Second, that a love story with robots is automatically an unmitigated sex fest. Yes, there are love scenes, but they're born out of a genuine emotional attachment and never mere filler.

Next time: further imperfect, or creating a dystopia.

Early on I realised that the world of Love and Robotics would not only need to be an alternate universe but a dystopia. I knew then I would have to tread very, very carefully.

Dystopia must be one of the hardest genres to get right. Many, even the greats, are so busy detailing the horror of the world, the story itself is an afterthought. YA novels are especially prone to this. Although I've enjoyed stories such as The Hunger Games and Only Ever Yours, I was never wholly convinced by the settings. Twenty four children are sacrificed annually - okaaay. Women are no longer born naturally and burnt on pyres when they reach their forties - say what?! Since the unwritten rule is that the society always wins, you tend to be stuck with the kind of apathetic lead nobody wants to read about.

Bearing this in mind, the best dystopias are those where the protagonist is aware life used to be different. Take Offred from The Handmaid's Tale: she was an educated woman with a husband and daughter, living in the US in the late Eighties. One military takeover later, she's forced either to bear children for infertile high status couples or be exiled to die of radiation poisoning. The book is powerful precisely because it shows how easily such a coup might be accomplished and how ordinary women could lose their basic rights, even down to control of their own bodies.

An interesting variation is when, to all intents and purposes, the world should be a paradise. Perhaps the most famous example is Brave New World. Now that the population are mass produced test tube babies, concepts such as "mother" and "father" are obscene (a character is publicly humiliated when he's revealed to have made a woman pregnant). Thanks to being conditioned from an early age and drugged up to the eyeballs with soma pills, the citizens believe they're truly happy. It takes an outsider, John the Savage, to recognise it for the shallow, loveless nightmare it is.

I wanted to create a society that is superficially similar to ours, even an improvement in some areas, but far from ideal when you scratch the surface. For instance, they are much more technologically advanced, with hyperrealistic robots and flying cars, but this is at the expense of history and conservation. The fight for equal rights is reversed, with men regarded as the weaker sex. Rather than being some idyllic Lady Land, men face the same degrading battles and assumptions women do in our reality. Even their language reflects this. You wouldn't believe how time consuming and difficult it is to erase the biased and/or sexist phrases we all use without thinking. Their church persecutes robot/human relationships with single minded vitriol, though they still condemn gay ones.

Alfred and Josh bond because they can see the flaws in their world: Alfred because he remembers a better time; Josh because he's innocent and hasn't grown up with centuries of psychic baggage. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I am pleased to announce that an updated version of Love and Robotics is now available. I apologise for any disappointment or frustration caused by the quality of the first edition.

If you own one of the original copies, you can update the content on the 'Manage Your Content and Devices' page on Amazon. That way it will be closer to the book I intended.

Again, I apologise to anyone who had a less than satisfactory experience and hope this won't put them off buying independently published ebooks in future.

Writing genre fiction, you're bound by certain conventions. For Love and Robotics I acquainted myself with numerous robotic tropes. Existential questions, women as sex objects, robots as straight Caucasian males (authors seem to think any further difference will alienate readers). Robots as either subservient or hostile.

I planned to subvert most - if not all - of these.

For example, many stories posit a universal acceptance of robots, with the odd lunatic fringe in opposition - or, alternatively, the lone sceptic who crows when he turns out to be right. I found this highly unlikely and thought it should be divided along cultural lines. So you have cultures like Huiji, where girls receive a robot boyfriend as a rite of passage, and you have ones like Farva, the Faith's heartland, where robots are routinely rounded up and destroyed. Lila, home to Alfred and Josh, is uncomfortably in the middle. Robots may have filled most of the 'unskilled' industries but there's outspoken resistance. The reasoning behind this varies: the Prime Minister claims to put her human electorate first; Alfred's former stance is entirely subjective/emotional.

With such ambivalence, is it any surprise that romance with one is so controversial? Reactions range from "Burn the witch!" to "Yes, please!" Lila's status as a former theocracy makes it especially complicated. Robots are regarded by some as the ultimate erotic fantasy - the execrable Our Robotic Romance saga, read by several of the characters, exploits this trend. To others it's an abomination, enjoyed only by the sick and amoral.

On the surface, you might wonder why Claire and Josh's relationship escapes condemnation. It's presented to the public as an ideal: they're the perfect young, straight and beautiful couple. The knee jerk responses to other pairings are in reality about other, older prejudices: Alfred and Josh because they're a gay couple with a visible age gap, Dee and Hector because they're an interracial couple. One character, Mandy, is only attracted to robots - 'robosexual', you might say.

Several sci fi authors have used the robot metaphor to examine the differences between men and women - and, unintentionally or not, created works of breathtaking misogyny. A common conceit is to make robots female by default, implying that men are the norm, women the exotic, manufactured "other."(Shades of the spare rib?) Fed up with these stories, I came up with two contrasts: Trini the pleasurecom, whose short and tragic life is wasted indulging her scuzzy master's whims; and Cora.

Like Trini, she's designed to be her creator's dream woman. Unlike her counterpart, she has a mind of her own; she's determined to make it as a singer. Freed of his poisonous influence, her life takes some extraordinary twists and turns. Her storyline came out of nowhere and surprised me throughout. If Love and Robotics has a heroine, it's arguably Cora.

Above all, I was bored with the unimaginative, repetitive depictions of robots in popular media. Even Star Trek's Data, a richer character than most, has an annoying inability to use contractions. You'd think that scientists capable of replicating realistic skin and mannerisms would want the end result to sound like a human being. Josh receives regular classes in human behaviour and concepts; any quirks are due to his personality, not to him being an 'artie'. It's explicit that any lapses in his knowledge are deliberate omissions on CER's part - homosexuality is socially unacceptable, so they don't teach him about it.

Rather than have all my robots be polymaths or calculating machines, I gave them wildly differing intelligence and abilities. Talent and street smarts aside, Cora is a very ordinary girl; the "Daves", or security bots, go into meltdown when asked to consider a life outside their remit. Josh may be able to conjure art works from scratch, but he loves to relax with a trashy book. My intention was, clockwork aside, my robots should all be human, believable personalities. I hope I succeeded.

Due to be released in 2018, The Artificial Wife is a companion novel to my earlier work Love and Robotics, set within the same world. It builds upon that story's themes of human-robot relations and emancipation, and introduces readers to a new cast of characters.

Disgruntled academic Robert Percival believes he will never find a woman to suit him. A friend accidentally suggests a solution: what if he acquires a robot wife?

Robert purchases two artificial humans, Summer and Elle. He changes their names and draws up a program to mould one of them into the spouse he requires.

Thrown into a situation outside their control, Summer and Elle become allies, then lovers. Will they ever break free from Robert's tyranny?

Here's some trivia about The Artificial Wife, my latest book:

* It was inspired by the real life case of Thomas Day, an 18th century author who bought two little girls and tried to mould one of them into the woman of his dreams. Needless to say, he failed. Read Wendy Moore's cracking How to Create the Perfect Wife for further details.

* I started writing in June 2017 and finished in February 2018 - practically unheard of for me. What can I say? I was hooked on the story.

* Another incentive was that Salman Rushdie was also writing a book about robots. "I'm damned if he'll get his book out before mine!" I declared the moment I heard.

* It's set within the same universe as Love and Robotics, but with relatively few instances of overlap. The only character who prominently features in both books is the odious bent copper Captain Lucy; he is a major figure in Elle's backstory.

* It's set about a year before the trial scenes of Love and Robotics (Robert mentions Josh marrying Claire in passing), so it's approximately 2164.

* This means that the Robotics Code as previously established is still in effect. It goes without saying that over time Summer and Elle break every last rule.

* Princess Azita, the fairy tale that becomes so important to Summer and Elle, is of course a feminist lesbian retelling of the Scheherazade legend. I was so frustrated by her ending up with that murderous git of a Sultan, I rewrote it.

* The novel changed titles a few times before it became The Artificial Wife; in the story itself, it's the title of Robert's ridiculous treatise (though he claims it's metaphorical). Elle was called Colette originally.

* I did write a detailed plan, but as usual I went off piste and all sorts of weird stuff occurred. There are two major plot twists I hadn't initially anticipated, but now it feels like it couldn't have happened any other way.

* It was going to be written in third person, but ultimately I decided that having the main four characters take turns to narrate worked better. I hated writing Robert's sections and deliberately spent as little time in his psyche as possible.

* Found by Amber Run became the book's unofficial theme song.