Generation Robot

February 5, 2018
Novelist Favro (Sputnik’s Children) serves up a frothy brew of fact and fiction in this appraisal of how the robots of science fiction are becoming part of day-to-day life. The book begins with a brief history of robotic simulacra in early science fiction that is marred by a number of factual inaccuracies: for example, Frankenstein was first published in 1818, not 1811, and John W. Campbell, not Joseph Campbell, edited the pulp magazine Astounding (not Amazing). Favro then takes the reader on a jaunty tour through a century of speculative robotics that includes breezy and accessible chapters on advances in autonomous vehicles, the prospect of self-sustaining smart houses, and the possibility of robots as helpmates and even intimates. Each chapter begins with an extrapolative scenario in which Favro writes herself into a scene in the near future; for example, in the chapter on autonomous vehicles, Favro conceives of hitching a ride in a driverless car from Toronto to Tenafly, N.J., in 2025. She then spends the rest of the chapter discussing the details of the scene in the context of research on the emerging technology. In every chapter, Favro shows how different actual robots are from many of their counterparts in science fiction. Her book’s greatest achievement may be to get readers looking at their cell phones, computers, prosthetics, and other gadgets as robots in the real world.

Starred review from January 1, 2018
This isn't just a book about the intersection between science fiction and science fact. Rather, author Favro tells us, it's about my generation's relationship with robots, artificial intelligence, and computers (she was born in the mid-1950s) and is intended to take stock of the fantastic voyage we've been on throughout our lifetimes. Many people have a tendency to think of robots and AI as being relatively newfangled inventions, but, while writers like Isaac Asimov and Karel Capek and Norbert Wiener were writing about robots and AIs before they actually existed, it's also true that the first walking, seeing robot was invented in 1970, and the first self-driving car was developedalthough never manufacturedin the mid-1960s. The internet is much older than most people realize, and so are computers. What Favro is saying, in prose that is lively and even (in places) tinged with an appealing aura of childlike gosh-wow, is this: for people of her generation, growing up with robots and artificial intelligence didn't just mean growing up reading about those things in books; it meant watching the world's most brilliant minds taking other people's wild ideas and making them real. Favro makes us see and appreciate that it really has been a fantastic voyage. A wonderful book for the SF geek who lurks in all of us.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)