Less Than Human

by Charles Platt

Burt is a trillion dollars worth of robot -- with a ten minute gap in his programming that renders him virtually useless to his creators. Still since coming to Earth, he has managed to find a snappy new set of clothes, a cure for cancer, and a sixteen year old girlfriend.

Now he's made some really amazing discoveries about himself and his adopted home. Discoveries ranging from the amazing Presidential robot to deviant mechanized sex to mutant wildlife in Lake Michigan to the truth behind kill-crazed New York City cops. Discoveries that are going to make life a lot harder for the chief programmer and the powers that be ... and a lot more lethal for Burt and his newfound friends

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

238 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

From wikipedia:

Charles Platt (born in London, England, 1945) is the author of 41 fiction and nonfiction books, including science-fiction novels such as The Silicon Man and Protektor (published in paperback by Avon Books). He has also written non-fiction, particularly on the subjects of computer technology and cryonics, as well as teaching and working in these fields. Platt relocated from England to the United States in 1970 and is a naturalized U. S. citizen.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

See:

Charles Platt, born 1869

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

After slogging my way through Paxton and Pullman, I needed something pacy and pulpy more than I needed something good, so the moment was perfect for this. I bought it at the final Nine Worlds, as part of a bit I'm not inclined to explain, hence ignoring the enthusiastic Piers Anthony quote on the cover; reading it, I remember how cancel-happy the crowd were getting by that point, and think how lucky it was that none of that persuasion knew the scandalous stuff being traded under their noses. Platt, you see, is not of the school which believes that satire should be operating from a firm moral viewpoint and directing everyone back to the straight and narrow. Rather, he understands that if you want something lively rather than preachy, a sound approach is to combine everyone's worst interpretations of the world. Hence, his vision of the nightmare future of 2010 AD has the thuggish, racist cops of leftist orthodoxy – but also disgusting old hippies, and a New York become a third world slum. And the idealists who offer a chance to fix some of this, even the trillion-dollar genius robot from the Moon, are dangerously naive. In its quaquaversal pessimism, it's often fairly prescient: janky AI systems ruin lives; fuel shortages and pollution are tolerated because nobody in power has the will to come up with a better way; working from home, and indeed never leaving the house, has become common among everyone above the class whose poverty obliges them to be on the streets; the President is an animatronic, with real power in the hands of a psychotic tech whiz high on apocalyptic fantasies. Hell, by the end he's planning to head for Mars while the US bombs Tehran. Is it any good? Not really. Even when it came out, in 1986, I suspect it would have felt incredibly dated, there being something much more wacky seventies about its mood, predictions, and sense of humour. But at least it didn't stick around.