Virtual Girl

Thomson, Amy. Virtual Girl. New York: Ace, 1993.

Female gendered robot comes of age and leaves her male maker. See for allegory of raising of consciousness and ending dependency upon a man. See also for a variation of what has been called (by Ron Goulart, we think), Spam!: i.e. robots' desiring to be human (like "Oreo" or "apple"; in this case, "metal on the outside, meat on the inside"). For the robot herself, cf. and contrast L. del Rey's "Helen O'Loy," and the robot Maria in Metropolis; for the robot's program feeling limited and trapped in cyberspace, cf. J. T. Sladek's The Müller-Fokker Effect and contrast Tron and W. Gibson's Neuromancer series. (RDE, 14/09/95)