(courtesy Ultimo Press)
I know, I know, I KNOW that you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (unless you’re part of a publishing company’s marketing team in which case that’s all you want to do).
BUT, and in the case of Letters to our Robot Son by Cadance Bell, it really is what first draws you to this Australian-set story of one just-awoken robot at the end of the world who springs to life with only a letter from his human parents, slowly-revealed tips and tricks on the real world to keep him and a small black kitten to keep him company.
The cover is a thing of evocative beauty, with Arto, the titular robot son, standing gazing out onto the rugged wonder of the Blue Mountains which lie to the west of Sydney and which form a beautiful backdrop, these days at least, to a seething mass of humanity just over the way.
But turn the book around and you are greeted by a back cover blurb which offers “family, hope and redemption” and at the end of the world no less, which frankly is a mix not usually offered in post-apocalyptic environments.
It’s here though in Letters to our Robot Son in joyously affecting abundance, though it does come with a huge amount of pain and violence and a sobering sense that though humanity may have brought about its own demise, that it’s still capable of royally f**king up what’s left of the world.
‘I [Arto] haven’t had many thoughts since I existed, little kit, but I reckon I’ve got a swell one now–would you like to come with me on an adventure?’
The natural world itself is doing very nicely without people to wreck it, as is surprisingly much of what is left of the civilised world, its eighty-year-old buildings mostly kept spick and span by an army of robots who keep tending to their tasks as if the people who programmed them never left.
It’s into this burgeoning but human-empty world that Arto emerges, excited to see what lies in wait for his endless bouncy optimism and garrulous need for connection – which, alas, most of his fellow robots, not being sentient and all, can’t provide him – and hoping to figure out who he is and why on what’s left of the earth he’s here.
The clues are fairly scant at first, and his ability to work out what he does see hampered by the fact that he has no real memory of who he is, who his parents were and why he’s been released into a world long shorn of humans who, he thinks, actually seem quite lovely and boy, wouldn’t he like to meet one!
In fact, Arto LOVES people, even though he’s never met one and likely never will since they seem very extinct and all that, and he loves his kitten MUFiN who behaves really erratically but who’s always worth burning off precious battery life for.
Arto is the beating heart of Letters to our Robot Son, a happily upbeat artificial being who feel more human that a lot of people you’ve likely met and who seizes your heart faster than MUFiN can begin purring when he’s cuddled.
(courtesy Ultimo Press)
So vibrantly excitable and lovable is Arto that he very quickly establishes Letters to our Robot Son as something quite wonderfully beautifully.
In this story which veers seamlessly and hugely affecting between blockbuster epic and emotionally intimate, Arto is our eyes and ears on a world that has moved on without humanity and which offers him mysteries upon intrigue layered over enigma.
Just as you begin to think that lovely sweet Arto may not find anyone who matches his zest for love and connection, he meets another sentient robot called Indi who claims to be his sister and who seems rather unconcerned with reuniting with his family.
As events fold, it becomes clear that Indi may be the reason a whole of terrible things in the world have happened and that maybe Arto might be better off with his family, assuming that’s what Indi is.
But Letters to our Robot Son is a thoughtful and nuanced piece of spectacular sci-fi work, and so while events may suggest a certain state of being and course of events, you are surprised and horrified and heartened in equal measure about who is doing what to whom and why.
It turns out that the world is neither as good nor as bad as Arto begins to think it is, and while he has as many steps backward in his nascent life experience as he has vaulting steps upward and forward, he is right at the heart of some pretty important and life-changing discoveries.
‘What’s it like outside these days?’ Persephone whispers.
‘Beautiful beyond reckoning.’
‘Was it worth the wait?’
In fact Letters to our Robot Son is fit to bursting with some very big and impactful questions, and while Arto doesn’t realise at the start of the novel that he’s asking them, the truth is that his entire existence, which builds and grows and becomes more complex even as he stays richly and warmly himself, is all about answering and playing a critically key role in healing a very broken world and one very broken individual in particular.
Full of adventure and heart and vaultingly imaginative storytelling, Letters to our Robot Son is that sci-fi novel you need to read, an almost perfect example of how the genre can ask some truly massive existential questions and ponder some big philosophical issues all while give vivacious life to a narrative that goes astonishingly BIG when it has to and comfortingly small at others.
Whatever size the storytelling takes and however big or small the emotions are, what Letters to our Robot Son has is a strident sense of why connection matters so much and how while it might be easy to give into hatred and revenge and conflict, that there is a real power, as Arto does, is sticking to what your heart wants and letting it run free.
Indi and others might ridicule him, but the real emotional power of the book lies in Arto’s bravery in staying true to his inexplicable belief in love, connection and the extraordinary delights of found family and that far from weakening him or robbing him of persuasive agency, is what makes him the most transformative, powerful and beloved figure of this extraordinarily rich and wonderful story.