vN

I’m inclined to be generous to new science-fiction, but for some reason this one didn’t grab me. vN puts a feminist-cyborg spin on the age old questions about human-created life (Frankenstein) and programmed limits to morality (Asimov’s Laws of Robotics), but I found it both too clever and not quite smart enough. The setting and the forces at play never quite jelled, in the way that Neuromancer, for example, feels immediately real and present.

It might be because the vN, even the protagonists, are too creepy by half. Emotional humanoids that replicate by eating trash and live a shadow, migratory existence manage to hit just about all my white male eurocentric fear buttons. The good guys make me want to reach for my trusty pistol-grip pump, and the bad guys are truly monstrous.