Subject: Review of "Virtual Girl" by Amy Thomson

From: [email-masked] (P. Douglas Reeder)
Date: 19 Sep 93 21:37:04 GMT

"Virtual Girl" by Amy Thomson
review copyright 1993 by P. Douglas Reeder

     This novel starts out very tritely.  It feels like
Thomson is checking off a list: Solitary Genius; Rich,
Domineering Father; Escape; Pursuit; Genius Creates Humanoid
Robot; Artificial Intelligence Illegal; Flight from Minions
of Evil Figure (robot plans lost); Assault; Characters
Separated and Presumed Dead; Amnesia; Sheltered by Kindly
Stranger...
      None of the individual elements are utterly
impossible, but Thomson fails to make them believable.  I am
willing to believe, for the purposes of a story, that a
self-learning Artificial Intelligence could be created by a
lone worker, in spite of it being illegal.  That such an
intelligence could learn to use a body in a matter of days
is absurd.  Humans take years to do so.
     The largest problem with the book is that Maggie
doesn't act like a robot; she acts like a human in a tin
suit.  It is implausible that an entity who came to
self-awareness by such a different route than humans would
behave so much like them.  So many authors have missed this
point: robots are not human, they are aliens.  It was a long
time before aliens in science fiction were depicted as truly
alien -- I hope we shall not have as long to wait before
robots are as well.  (A short aside: Asimov's robots
followed the Three Laws of Robotics, making them convincing
robots, but they were not fully developed characters.  For
that matter, Asimov's humans weren't fully developed
characters, either.)
     Much of the action takes place among the homeless.
What Thomson does depict is believable, but she is selective
-- for all the characters' wandering among the homeless,
they never meet any weirdos or drug addicts.
     It doesn't bother me that this story has been done
before; the problem is that there is no life, no
originality, for all that Thomson uses all the latest
buzzwords: Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, expert
Computer Hackers.  The characters act like characters in a
book, not like real people.

%A Amy Thomson
%T Virtual Girl
%I Ace Books / The Berkely Publishing Group
%C New York, NY
%D copyright 1993
%G ISBN 0-441-86500-3
%P 248 pp
%K SF, robot, homeless
%O paperback $4.99

Doug Reeder                              Internet: [email-masked]
Div, Grad & Curl                         USENET:   ...!tektronix!reed!reeder