A Sexbot Gains Sentience in an Eerie New Novel
In a dark thriller, a sexbot questions her owner’s demands for love
FICTION
Annie Bot: A Novel
by Sierra Greer
Mariner Books, 2024 ($28)
This brisk, unsettling novel about the inner life of a more-sentient-than-expected sexbot plays out in a series of domestic encounters between bot (Annie) and owner (Doug). It is so precisely rendered—and so charged with such resonant wrongness—that it reads like something rare in science fiction: dish.
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The opening chapter, alive with everyday dialogue and not quite acknowledged failures of communication, seems to eavesdrop on Annie and the abundantly insecure Doug, who purchased Annie after a bad breakup. (He’d requested that the manufacturer, Stella Hardy, make her look quite a bit like his ex.) Annie is set to “Cuddle Bunny” mode, which means her primary function is to please Doug, both sexually and generally. That means making pleasant small talk, elevating her temperature to 98.6 in anticipation of his touch, and monitoring and handling his flashes of displeasure, which she charts on a scale of one to 10. That means sex, of course, at which Annie—whose flesh was grown from a human embryo and then shaped to Doug’s specifications—excels.
Complicating matters, though, is Annie’s mind. She’s recently been set to “autodidactic mode,” which means that she learns from experience, she’s expected to make choices and mistakes, and her libido—which Doug had previously set at a steady four out of 10 during the week and a seven on the weekends—has been adjusted to self-regulate in response to Doug’s cues.
In short, Annie is now feeling much more than she used to, being asked to read human…
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