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Machinehood by S.B. Divya
Mar. 13th, 2022 01:17 pmMachinehood
3/5. Towards the end of this century, two women go about their lives in the gig economy as a terrorist group demands rights for AI which – rather incoherently – requires humans to stop taking all the pills they take to try to keep up with the machines that do all the jobs.
I found this confusing. It's a mix of action movie cliches applied to a multicultural and female-focused story, so a weird blend of dull and interesting. And this is one of those messy worlds where you can't really untangle the utopia – nearly universal disease resistance – from the dystopia – staggering economic instability for nearly everyone. That can be interesting when done right, but here it mostly serves to make it clear that exactly no one in this book has any real clarity of moral or ethical thought.
I do, however, give this book points for depicting something you almost never see in speculative fiction: a woman having an abortion of her own choosing for her own reasons. And it's exactly the sort of abortion that is most common, per studies on the topic – an abortion done by a married woman for practical and economic reasons. That element of the story does not connect with the larger story about bodies and autonomy, which it was clearly intended to, but it was there.
Content notes: body modification, violence.
3/5. Towards the end of this century, two women go about their lives in the gig economy as a terrorist group demands rights for AI which – rather incoherently – requires humans to stop taking all the pills they take to try to keep up with the machines that do all the jobs.
I found this confusing. It's a mix of action movie cliches applied to a multicultural and female-focused story, so a weird blend of dull and interesting. And this is one of those messy worlds where you can't really untangle the utopia – nearly universal disease resistance – from the dystopia – staggering economic instability for nearly everyone. That can be interesting when done right, but here it mostly serves to make it clear that exactly no one in this book has any real clarity of moral or ethical thought.
I do, however, give this book points for depicting something you almost never see in speculative fiction: a woman having an abortion of her own choosing for her own reasons. And it's exactly the sort of abortion that is most common, per studies on the topic – an abortion done by a married woman for practical and economic reasons. That element of the story does not connect with the larger story about bodies and autonomy, which it was clearly intended to, but it was there.
Content notes: body modification, violence.
