Intelligent sex robots may seem like a dream of the future, but that dream is a couple of centuries old. ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 story The Sandman imagines a young man falling for a lovely but “stiff and soulless” girl who turns out to be a clockwork creation. More recently, Alan Ayckbourn and first-time novelist Sierra Greer have used the artificial girlfriend to shed light on human emotions.
Sarah Crossan is an Irish author whose eight novels for teens and young adults have racked up an impressive slate of prize nominations. This is her second work for adults, after Here Is the Beehive, a verse novel about adultery. You could say this new book is also about a love triangle, but with a twist: the other woman is an AI-enabled doll, fully customisable – not just in the number of her freckles and dimensions of her orifices, but in every aspect of her personality. Dolores finds her in the garage, tucked into a bag, and confronts David, her husband, who simply says: “Her name is Zoey.”
