Thousands of years into the future, an automaton awakes. It’s said that it’s the last physical body on Earth and only it can carry out the task at hand in order to save humanity and their digital forbears. The automaton looks up to see the large supercomputer that takes up half the sky, as it houses the billions of digitised people currently under threat from…something. In order for the automaton to carry out its task, though, it has to be reminded of the history that led to this moment. Luckily, a trusty sidekick robot helper is there to fill him in on everything so that he can save the world.
The Automaton was a fun read that ultimately left me a little listless and unfulfilled. I know this is a general trend with me lately, but I think it’s somewhat important to dig into it with The Automaton, specifically considering the moment we are collectively living through with the push for generative AI and the promise of “automation.” Young draws much of his inspiration from Asimov in this story, choosing to focus on the long game of a future history to explore the ideas at play. Personally, I jived with this instinct. To accomplish this, the narrative is divided into two parts. The present timeline in which the automaton is trying to catch up to speed so he can complete the task he’s assigned himself. And then there are sections about the past, each one sort of an anthology as a historic automaton finds himself in the presence of a member from the same family as generations pass by. Each dip into the past comes with a time jump and a new situation to navigate. I didn’t particularly find the “singular automaton” and “important family” dynamic particularly interesting; it sort of flattened the possibilities and streamlined the story in ways I didn’t like, but the foundational structure worked for me.
The novel took its time to explain the new set of circumstances that the automaton was going to be working from, and introduced each character nicely. The Automaton went to great lengths to even dive into economics, demographics, and the political systems that supported the status quo, and the ones that were fueling a transition to solve the problems at hand. There were wars, rebellions, attempts at assimilation and reconciliation, robot and human love (though I had some issues with this particular storyline, I will touch on later), segregation, digital consciousness and obviously that all too familiar theme in robotic operas – what it means to be human. Had the structure been similar but following different automatons and people around, I would have had an easier time enjoying myself, but overall, I think it captured the future history well. It had a similar structure to I, Robot as it focused on solving individual problems of the moment instead of trying to work out “the big robot problem.” It was a spirit of iteration, and some changes like this not only come with time, but with a crisis that calls into question the current social mode within the novel. It was refreshing from that standpoint, and it kept me reading along.
Where I mostly took issue with the novel was its reliance on a sole heroic automaton, the OG itself, and the family it cosmically attaches itself to. Ultimately, it flattened a lot of aspects about the story in order to make it fit, in my opinion. The automaton itself was a sort of bland stand-in character that didn’t really have much to offer in terms of personal motivation. It stepped in to save the day on numerous occasions with nothing but a can-do attitude and a sidekick psychology, despite being the main character. It had some fun moments no doubt, but it also unravels the work done to create a convincing future history. By relying on an immortal individual and the folks it recruits each time from the same family, it reduces the complexity of the problems at hand. Sure, not everything works out hunky dory all the time, but a solution is often found that smooths out the rough edges. The automaton becomes almost indispensable at key moments because of the legend it accrues, almost assigning it a god-like status as it travels through centuries of human time. I get that it streamlines the narrative, removing the extra work of having to write new characters for the reader to buy into. But it also failed to develop a character that is interesting enough to latch onto to make that decision worthwhile.
The human characters don’t really fare all that much better, feeling moulded to fit the moment instead of someone who just happens to find themselves on the cusp of history. Their last name is ultimately what matters, not who they are when they find themselves crossing paths with the automaton. I think it could have been an interesting dynamic if the story played with the idea. I know this is a little bit wishcasting, but I think it would have been interesting to see someone who wasn’t prepared for the moment, despite the long family history, or if there was more of a mythos within the family surrounding the automaton. Instead, he just kind of shows up without much fanfare. The one story I didn’t quite jive with was the one where he falls in love with the sole woman character of the family who interacts with him. He feels a need to search her out, and then they happen to be fond enough of each other that they convert his binary code into DNA so that they may have a child, and whoopsie daisy, she gets frigde’d during birth. I don’t necessarily mind that it happened; it’s just that her sole purpose was to be his lover and give birth to a child who would change the world. Every other man in the family contributed to a change in society in a big way, and she gave birth to another historical hero. It wasn’t egregiously bad in theory, but I wasn’t enamoured with how it all played out, especially since she didn’t have much character in the same way everyone else did, making her particular role stand out that much more.
Lastly, it’s *drum roll* time for the themes! Boy oh boy, this one has some ideas it wants to play with, but it never quite knows what to focus on. It’s not an inherently bad trait, I think you could broach many questions over the course of several stories placed together in a sequence like this. The Automaton mostly fails in this broader spectrum because it barely even scratches the surface of so many of the ideas it brings to the front. However, I will give credit to the fact that it does seem very focused on the idea of “why” robots, and specifically “automatons”, would be necessary to society. It dives into a real reason surrounding demographics and the need to keep the wheels of the economy turning in order to maintain an overly complex society that attempts to provide for all. And from there, it does spin into some of the contradictions that would arise from it. But because of the nature of the narrative, it has to move on to the next section before it starts to ask too many questions of itself.
There was one specific idea that I wish The Automaton really spent some time on, and that was the difference between a digital human and an automaton. The present-day narrative within the story revolves around trying to maintain a large floating supercomputer that houses the digital consciousness of humanity. But we never really get to see what it means to live that kind of life, or whether those transferred consciousnesses were truly transfers or just digital facsimiles of the humans who once existed. Considering this was released in 2023, there was a big push to imagine a far-off future (by those utilitarian effective altruists) in which billions of digitally simulated humans could live happily, contributing to the sum of all good in the universe. And it barely even thinks about why people would do such a thing. The book doesn’t make a judgment, good or bad, which is totally fine. But no one really questions the decision to do it. No one wonders about the good it would do, or if there is a spiritual or moral argument against it. I don’t need the book to say “thing good” or “thing bad,” but it’s nice when these huge society-based decisions occur, if the facets of acceptance and denial are explored when the plot of the book revolves around maintaining that status quo.
All in all, I did enjoy the book despite my misgivings about how it handles some of its narrative and themes. It surprised me with its depth in some areas, while confounding me with its shallowness in others. The Automaton, by Ian Young, is a great attempt by an indie writer to capture something interesting, something refreshing. It falls short in some ways, but I applaud it for its strengths. If you want an exploration of robots and AI that isn’t just fear-mongering that tries to explore the ramifications of its introduction over generations, then you should certainly pick up The Automaton.
Rating: The Automaton – A future history of spectacle, with less wonder than I wished.
-Alex