Caroline 's Reviews > Annie Bot

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

In a future world, year unknown, Doug lives with his girlfriend Annie, a robotic sex doll who can pass for human. She’s what’s called a “Stella” and can be set to operate solely as a housekeeper, nanny, or sexual partner. “Autodidactic mode,” which is turned on for her, makes these robots almost human—able to make choices and, in a strange creative decision that’s never explained, to feel emotion.

This novel by Sierra Greer is a simple story about complex topics: female agency and sexual objectification of women. It strikes an appropriately serious tone, though it takes a wrong turn at first: With a string of sex scenes filling the early chapters, the book seems only salacious. Later, it shifts jarringly and starts echoing aspects of The Handmaid’s Tale. The message is indisputable (although Greer didn’t trust readers’ intelligence—at one point Annie is reading The Handmaid’s Tale). No one can read this book and not have feelings about what happens.

This quick read doesn’t explore as it should, but it has basic strengths. The briskly paced plot is suspenseful and surprising. Characters are one-dimensional but hold interest: Annie the robot is likable and able to be sympathized with, and her owner is easy to hate, (view spoiler)[an atrocious man—abusive, sexist, and arrogant (hide spoiler)]. His friend is cheerful and friendly but caddish. Some of its strengths are also in what’s absent: The book doesn’t have the hackneyed dual-perspective structure, flashbacks, twists, or red herrings. Its few surprises are organic to the story.

However, Greer did the bare minimum to make this science fiction. Annie Bot is strangely incurious for a book focused on artificial intelligence. Greer didn’t dazzle readers with a futuristic vision or examine this technology in a way that provokes thought. The topic of AI and robotics couldn’t be more relevant now. Because of real-life hopes and worries about AI, Annie Bot had built-in opportunity to move readers—but it didn’t. With some scenes making clear the benefits, drawbacks, and dangers of robot integration, Greer’s book could have been thoroughly modern, compelling readers to consider the ethics of AI, how it should be used, and which limits should be placed on it.

Instead Annie Bot is an (unhumorous) Small Wonder for adults: Anachronistically, it’s life as we know it now, plus a female robot who looks perfectly human. To validate Annie’s usefulness and extraordinary realness, this book needed grand, immersive world-building to bring to life an advanced society that uses human-like robots generously and widely. A story revolving around a life-changing technology can’t succeed if it ignores how the technology has changed life—and, for that matter, the earlier technological changes that paved the way for it.

On the smaller level, an information-dumping question-and-answer scene between two characters clarifies a lot but avoids finer explanation of the robot machinery. Making Annie autodidactic gave Greer room to write a more dimensional story (and to conveniently bypass complex aspects of robotics and world-building), but it also negated most of her character’s robot essence, sucking so much innovation out of Annie Bot. This robot plugs into a charging dock and can have her back unzipped, but that’s as machine-like as she gets. In addition to feeling emotion, she operates within hazy limits: She must obey some commands but mostly thinks independently and makes choices, some risky. Annie is barely a robot, and nothing about the story necessitates robot-ness, so a sheltered human woman with a child-like mind would have worked just as well for Greer’s purposes. The biggest problem with this book is that it needed more robot. It needed to ooze robot on the mechanical level, in how Annie behaves; on the wider, societal level; and on the plotting level.

Despite some dark scenes, Annie Bot is a popcorn read more than anything. Popcorn could be what Greer intended—she may not aspire to be the next Ray Bradbury, or even commit fully to writing sci-fi—but meaningful topics need equally meaningful execution. Popcorn sci-fi can be done well, but to work, both topic and execution have to be popcorn. Annie Bot’s topic and execution are misaligned, and even if Greer had done nothing more than simply align them, Annie Bot would be stronger than it is now.

Trigger warning pertaining to romantic relationships: (view spoiler)[intimate-partner abuse (hide spoiler)]