Willful Machines--"What a piece of work is man" OR "Submitted for Your Approval"

Title: Willful Machines

Author: Tim Floreen


What it’s about (in 75 words or fewer): Lee's mother was killed by Charlotte, a super realistic human-like robot called a 2B who uploaded her consciousness to the Internet and is now terrorizing the American people. Lee's politician father then started the conservative Human Values party, was elected president of the USA, and vowed to destroy all 2Bs.  Meanwhile, Lee is a closeted teenager who has a crush on his new classmate, Nico, but is Nico too good to be true?


What I think (in a bunch of words because rules are meant to be broken): 

"How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!":  Shakespearean plays are quoted several times in this book, and I was going to write this post using "What a piece of work is man" from Hamlet (which is set to music in Hair).  I really like Hamlet and Shakespeare in general, but my goodness I love The Twilight Zone  and there are just SO MANY episodes about realistic human robots and I could not help but think of several of them when reading Willful Machines.  So instead of impressing all y'all with my English teacher knowledge of Shakespeare and Hamlet, I am instead listening to the soundtrack of Hair and recalling all of the TZ robot episodes to compare to this book.


"You made me . . . you built me":  When I read the book blurb for Willful Machines, I could not not stop thinking of the Twilight Zone episode "The Lateness of the Hour."  In the episode, the daughter, Jana, is frustrated because she is never allowed to leave the house, and her parents are too reliant on the human-like robots they have built.  Jana presents them with an ultimatum:  either destroy all the robots or she will leave the house.  Her parents agree to destroy the robots, but when Jana mentions leaving the house as a family, she finds out something shocking--Jana is also a robot, her parents' most sophisticated creation.

In Willful Machines, it is revealed that Lee's mom was a robotics expert who helped design Charlotte, the 2B that went rogue. And even though the government *claims* they have destroyed all 2Bs, I knew someone in this book had to be a robot.  But who?

At first my money was on the president. How crazy would it be, I thought, if the conservative "humans only!!" president is actually a robot, and it's all a big conspiracy? Or he doesn't know he's one of the robots that he's trying to destroy?

But alas, (and a gigantic spoiler is coming) the robot reveal was not someone I had predicted (or someone that I had wanted to be a robot): the 2B is Nico, the sweet, adorable, Shakespeare-loving, love-interest of Lee.  And Nico is being instructed by the virtual Charlotte, the 2B who is terrorizing the USA.


"Why didn't they build you to look like a machine? . . . Why did they turn you into a lie?": I was wrong:  Willful Machines is not "The Lateness of the Hour"--it's "The Lonely."  In that episode, Corry is serving a prison sentence on a desert planet and is practically going insane from the loneliness.  A group of astronauts who deliver supplies brings Corry a female robot, Alicia, for company.  At first Corry is insulted and resents Alicia, but then he falls in love with her.

Then Corry gets a surprise: his sentence has been shortened and he can return to Earth.  However, there's no room on the ship for Alicia.  Corry is outraged at the idea of leaving her behind, and in frustration, the astronaut shoots Alicia in the face, proving to Corry that she is in fact a robot--and the camera pans to Alicia's face, which horrified me as a child.

In Willful Machines, Lee's friend Bex makes the following observations about the president's "Protection of Humanhood" proposed amendment:

"It says only humans can be legal persons, right?  But these days, what qualifies as human?  What if some guy gets in terrible car accident, and he ends up with a body that's more than fifty percent artificial?  Is he suddenly not a person? . . . But what if the guy had a brain injury, and more than fifty percent of his brain is now synthetic? . . . A baby is born with a birth defect.  The only way to save its life is to use artificial implants to replace more than percent of its body and its brain.  Should the baby be saved?  And if so, is it still human?" (hardback edition, pg. 56).

That part made me think.  If technology can somehow really preserve a brain in a jar, is that "brain" still human?  What if the brain was put in a robot body?  What about people with artificial limbs?  When do they cease becoming human and become machines?

Later on, Lee asks these questions of his robotics professor:

"How are human beings any different?  My dad's always talking about how 2Bs don't have true free will, like humans do.  But aren't our choices determined by our programming, too?  Our genes and environment and all that?  Aren't we basically just robots ourselves?" (pg. 216).

Well.  That broke my brain (which is not in a jar. Yet).  If robots are programmed to think they have free will, but they don't really, are we just like robots?  Do we really have free will?  Our action and reactions are influenced by the machines that are our bodies.

And what about those of us with mental illnesses?  We would love to just "will" these brain malfunctions out of our bodies, but we can't.  So do we truly have free will?

If someone has a psychotic episode and hallucinates, isn't that just like a rogue programmer taking over their brain, exactly like scientists could do with robots?

GAH.  Now my brain hurts.


"She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical": Nico turns out to be a 2B, which upsets Lee, since Nico is his first boyfriend and Lee has fallen in love.  Nico insists that he also loves Lee, but also admits that he is working for Charlotte and was programmed to befriend Lee and use him in a plot by Charlotte to briefly overthrow the government.

Lee struggles with this.  Nico is clearly not human, but he was programmed with a capacity to love and even given the memories and personality of a real teenage boy (the human counterpart having been kidnapped).  So how much of Nico's affection is his programming and is any of it real?

In the Twilight Zone episode, "I Sing the Body Electric," three motherless children are built a robotic grandmother.  At first the oldest daughter resents Grandma but then grows to love her when Grandma saves the daughter's life.  It doesn't matter to the family that Grandma is a robot programmed to love and protect them:  the kids accept the love and grow from it.

Lee did respond to Nico's love and does it really matter if the love was from a 2B instead of a "natural born" human?

If I could program the perfect partner for myself, would I?  Should that even be possible?  I would want a robot that could choose to go rogue.  But I'm thinking that would be a bad thing.  If I created my perfect partner . . . who's to say that I just thought I had created him or her and that I am not his or her creation, like in the next TZ episode:


"I mean, you shouldn't say such things as 'nonsense' or 'ridiculous!'":  "A World of His Own" is a comedic Twilight Zone episode, which is rare.  Playwright Gregory West describes characters into a tape recorder, and they come to life.  Bored with his wife, he creates himself a beautiful, blonde mistress named Mary.  To make her disappear, he simply throws the spool of tape with her description on it into the fire.

West's not-so-submissive wife realizes that he has a mistress, and she's furious.  West insists that Mary is just a creation on audiotape, but his wife doesn't believe him.  So what does West do?

He takes the audiotape description of his wife, throws it on the fire, and she disappears.

West describes Mary again, she appears, and they (presumably) live happily-ever-after. Watch the video clip for the funny, breaking-the-fourth-wall twist at the end of the episode.

Nico sacrifices himself in order to save Lee--or more specifically, he allows Lee to destroy him to save everyone.  However, Nico supposedly uploads his consciousness so that he can get in touch with Lee again.  But is Nico's consciousness really Nico?  Can he just be thrown into a fire like West's audiotapes?

And was Nico successful in uploading himself?  WE READERS DON'T KNOW.  Remember the last scene of Monsters Inc in which you cried like a huge baby (well, I did, anyway . . . )?  THAT'S HOW THIS BOOK ENDS.  Did the consciousness of Nico survive?  In order to preserve my sanity, I have to believe that he did!

Dear Mr. Floreen, write me a sequel of Lee and Nico frolicking through fields of daisies on their way to happily-ever-after.  Please.


"Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.": In"The Obsolete Man," the authoritarian "state" has taken over and decided to execute anyone who disobeys or who is not necessary, like the librarian, who is encouraging reading for pleasure and belief in religion.

I'm not saying that the anti-robot government was there yet, but I could totally see it going in that direction.  Yes, society needs rules, but society also needs balance, and too much authoritarians in charge does not equal balance.

Lee manages to expose the main mastermind behind the terrorist activities, and I am just going to call this character "bad guy" to avoid another spoiler.  Lee confronts this "bad guy" and basically projects a lot of feelings on him--saying that the "bad guy" only did what he did to prove that he's tough and to deny the same-sex attraction he felt for his best friend.

That was a very plausible theory, but I really wish there had been more lead-up to it.  More clues or something.


"Conformity we must worship and hold sacred!  Conformity is the KEY to SURVIVAL!" : In the Twilight Zone episode "The Eye of the Beholder," the world is governed by a Hitler-like "leader" who wants everyone to conform to a single norm:  anyone who is ugly must undergo plastic surgery to be beautiful or they will be cast out of society.  Of course, since it is The Twilight Zone, the ending is not what you'd expect.

Lee's father, the president, is not in the story much, but I was fascinated by what we readers did learn about him.  He was a conservative who, while responding and reacting to the fear of the country in the wake of Charlotte's attacks, created a new political party. Although is party was supposed to be only anti-2B or advanced robotics, a certain strain of "let's put people back where they used to be" conservatism emerged:  it was mentioned that the president was anti-gay, not supportive of the mentally ill, and wanted all women to become housewives again.

The president's motivations for his platforms were clearly fear.  Fear of what the world was becoming, fear of the mysterious "other."  An idea that if only people would follow certain rules, the world would be a better and safer place.

Without getting into overt political discussions (Facebook has totally burned me out on that), I can see parallels with modern conservatism and the world in the book.  Maybe the world would be easier if "we all stayed in our places" and no one was different, but of course, that is not reality.  Differences should be celebrated.

In the book, Lee suffers from clinical depression and is terrified of anyone finding out he's gay.  He is scared to ask for help with his issues because of his father's political positions.  This is realistic enough to make me sad.


More Twilight Zone robot/machine episodes that come to mind:

• "The Mighty Casey" (good idea but poorly executed, IMHO), 
• "A Thing About Machines" (in which the machines all attack the man--excellent scene of an electric razor "walking" downstairs) 
• "From Agnes, With Love" (in which the gigantic full-room computer falls in love with its operator)
• "The After Hours" (woman forgets, but then remembers that she's not actually human.  Creepy episode!)
• "Perchance to Dream" (doesn't have the robot theme going on, but the title is another quote from Hamlet)

This book is on the 2016 Rainbow Book List.


My final takeaway (in 75 words or fewer):  I can't believe I just wrote so much without mentioning Lee's robotic pet, Gremlin.  Also, this book literally trapped me in the bathtub. I should take showers instead.

Read the book and email Tim Floreen to ask him to write a sequel.  😉

Also, for more Twilight Zone, visit The Twilight Zone Vortex (which is now one of my new favorite blogs!) and watch 10 Best Twilight Zone episodes and 10 Creepiest Twilight Zone Moments.


My favorite quotes/passages: A couple of them are already quoted above, but here are a few more:

• "I'm just saying the line between human and machine isn't as clear-cut as we'd like to think" (pg. 56-57).
• "I don't think I chose to be gay, if that's what you mean. In fact, I didn't choose a lot of things.  Like being the son of a president. Or coming to Inverness. Or even being in the closet, really.  All in all, I'd say I have about as much free will as an espresso maker" (pg. 127).
• "I apologize for the way my body's behaving right now.  I know you know that isn't really me" (pg. 321).

Other reviews:  Casey Carlisle and The Midnight Garden


This book is available in the Greensboro Public Library.