Alpha Bots

Self-aware female robots, designed to provide services to their husbands, attain autonomy and run uproariously amok in this satirical SF series starter. In the "near future," Cookie Rifkin, a robotic "womanoid," lives with her husband, Norman, in the suburban town of New Stepford. Norman goes off to work each day in the gold mines, while Cookie suffers from boredom, despite being an artificial being, and smokes marijuana joints soaked in a hallucinogen that she concocts from banana peels. She feels deeply unfulfilled, and Norman suspects a defect in her programming, proclaiming, "Nobody wants a sentient sex toy." The winds of change are blowing through New Stepford, however. On a trip to the supermarket, Cookie meets AI police officer Maggie Rouser, who, as her name suggests, awakens feelings of anger and empowerment. Then Cookie's neighborhood book club, a sanctuary of "sweet treats, coffee, and great conversation," is invaded by a male interloper named Wayne Dixon, who installs a new program into her matrix: Free Will 3.0. Soon, Cookie and the town's other robotic housewives discover that they can do far more than what's expected of them--if they don't destroy themselves first. Lock's narrative is raw and boisterous, presenting a frenzied jumble of homages and references to works as varied as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). The story is also clearly and heavily inspired by Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (1972) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996). The characters and their actions are bitingly humorous and often grotesque, involving cartoonish violence that's occasionally off-putting. Overall, the womanoids' journey toward self-actualization is entertaining and thought-provoking; however, some aspects of the robots' function are a bit jarring, such as their all-too-human reliance on mind-altering drugs. (A recipe for "Cookie Rifkin's Day-old Banana Pudding" is included.) A provocative, tongue-in-cheek look at male-female relations.

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