Keeping It Real

Robson, Justina. Keeping It Real. New York City: Pyr, 2007. For Gollancz edition, reprints, translations, and award nominations, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of April 2023, here.[1] Reviewed by Ritch Calvin, SFRA Review #278 (Oct.-Dec. 2006): 14-15, source for our citation.

Calvin notes the novel's protagonist as "the latest incarnation of Joanna Russ's Jael" in The Female Man, although in this case an agent of the government, described by one character as "G.I. Jane on acid" (Robson 261). When Lila Black is beaten badly enough to appear dead,

Her agency reconstructed her with all the latest technology, leaving her half flesh and half metal, and with a nuclear reactor to power it all. She has "Battle armour, multi-functional self-adapting guns, missile launchers [...] and blades in her hands (217). [...] In addition, she has a built-in "AI-self" that contains a vast amount of data and built-in connections to a communications web. But for all her abilities [...] her first assignment is guard detail for an elf, who is a rock star.

Apparently the rock is highly electronic, and it's odd to have an elf rock star "despite the fact that elves loathe all forms of machinery and technology" (Calvin, p. 14).

Calvin notes the the main p-o-v character is "Agent Lila Black, the Otopian cyborg security agent," which makes the elves (the novel has elves, and faeries) contrasting characters, and moves the novel into "an attempt to posit and understand 'magic' in scientific terms. For example, the opening between worlds is not the result of a magical spell but rather [...] of a "quantum catastrophe' inside a supercollider" (p. 15).

See for AI, cyborgs, and a strong contrast to a work like The Rise of Endymion, where a super-cyborg warrior (the Shrike) is a kind of supernatural helper, but a scary one, and where a very high-tech cyborg warrior gendered female is scary and a very dangerous threat.

RDE, finishing, 27Ap23