Photo by Konstantin Dyadyun on Unsplash
This is a review of “Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad for @didic’s Book/Story Review contest. This contest focused on novels and short stories by Desi and Southeast Asian authors.
I have been working my way through Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction for a while now—this seemed like a great opportunity to publicize this book, because it’s a gem! Then I read a bunch of the stories @didic recommended to others, and loved them all, and after checking in with the person who originally received the recommendation, I decided to review one of those instead. That said, I really do recommend Amok, which showcases a wide variety of great writers in the Asia-Pacific. It’s a lot more broad than didic’s selection of Desi/SEA, and includes authors from Australia, Hawai’i, China, and Japan alongside authors from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
Anyway, on to the review!
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
This story is about an antique robot named Computron, which lives in the Simak Robotics Museum as the “only known sentient robot, created in 1954 by Doctor Karel Alquist to serve as a laboratory assistant. No known scientist has managed to recreate the doctor’s invention. Its steel-framed box-and-claw design is characteristic of the period.” The reader mostly gets the story from Computron’s point of view, and it’s a very fun and unique way of seeing the world.
It all begins when Computron is asked a question about anime during the museum’s “Robotics Then and Now performance,” a small exhibition of robots that ends with a modern android breakdancing. After the show, it goes back to its room and googles the fictional show Hyperdimension Warp Record. As can happen to any of us, Computron watches the show and then falls down an internet rabbit-hole: it becomes a fan itself and spends hours reading forums and the fan-edited wiki for the show.
Then, Computron discovers fanfiction, particularly slash fiction—that is, fan-created stories based on a piece of media which pair two (or more) characters together who are not necessarily in a relationship in the original media; it is called slash fiction because of the slash used to indicate relationships, like so: Cyro/Ellison. Computron reads a particularly lurid example that misrepresents the chassis of the robot character (changes made to facilitate sexy-times, no less!), and is just about to leave a pointed comment for the author, when it discovers that another user has already done so. In response to defensive comments from the fic’s author, Computron creates its own account to write fanfiction itself. Though its characterization of the human character Ellison confuses some readers, it finds a fan in one particular user, bjornruffian. The two strike up an internet-based friendship, of sorts, when bjornruffian reaches out to RobotFan (Computron’s internet handle) for assistance on a project.
Computron ostensibly does not experience emotions, due to lacking emotion circuits, but through chat interactions and internal narration, the reader begins to sense that there is something more going on, particularly following a memory in which Computron sees its creator destroy another robot, and must clean up afterwards: “Computron stays still, standing in front of the mirror, silently observing the destruction of Hexode so he can gather up its parts later. When Computron photographs Hexode’s display case, he is careful to avoid capturing any part of himself in the reflection.”
Part of what makes this story so compelling is the details about Computron. Because it has pincer-like claws rather than hands, it types slowly, key by key, holding a metal stylus in each claw. It objects to inaccuracies and prefers technical precision, and it provides technical schematics to bjornruffian to help improve their fanart. The story is woven throughout with snippets of data that capture a whole world beyond the museum which Computron spends all of its time, from a journal article about robots of the 1950s to internet forums dedicated to the fictional anime Computron follows. There is an amusing mismatch of experience and expectation, since none of Computron’s fellow fans know that it is a sentient robot they are communicating with and not another human being.
Overall, this is a funny and sweet little story, with plenty of humorous moments like this:
—File Transfer of “schematic-screenshots.zip” from “RobotFan” finished.
[bjornruffian] THANK YOU
[bjornruffian] I swear you’re some sort of angel or something
[RobotFan] That is incorrect
[RobotFan] I am merely a robot
It combines a gently playful look at modern fan culture with existential reflection on robots and emotions. I highly recommend this story, especially for anyone familiar with fandom, or who loves robots. It’s not very long, but it’s well worth the read.
Thanks for reading, and if you read “Fandom for Robots” and love it, you might also want to check out the fanfic someone wrote for it on AO3: Meetings for Robots. Some people don’t like fanfiction, and that’s fine, but I do like it and I think this is a very cute little continuation!
Dividers created by @javehimself, and used with thanks.
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