"Female"
When I read, I find myself engaging both my heart or, if you prefer, emotions, and intellect. I am also of the belief that intelligence cannot exclude the human heart (emotion). The impetus to reproduce, create life, is seated in the emotions even if the holder of said emotions wishes to deny this intellectually...and, even if sometimes the emotions aren't all that productive and healthy. Most of the eminently acclaimed scientists know that there is a point in the study and investigation of our universe that knowledge and logic fail in the absolute understanding of things. It is at this point that an emotional decision is made to ascribe meaning to our human condition or not. It is not an entirely logical or informed decision, it is a human decision. Love, belief, grace and mercy are qualities that allow us to transcend the limits of the infinite reality that our scientific minds place before us. Where the limits of our knowledge and logic confine us to the limits of that reality we observe. It is belief, love, grace and mercy that lift us up out of these limits and allow our minds and hearts to soar in other realms that we cannot actually prove exist.
Pardon me, I digress. This book came out of the imagination of a skillful author who imagined a future world of new planets, new discoveries, new technologies, new alien enemies?, half-human/half-machine sentient beings. Some of the ideas were enchanting. Some made my blood run cold. Ultimately she fell a bit short in the actual world building.
I recall seeing a movie titled "A.I." (Artificial Intelligence). "The screenplay by [Steven] Spielberg was based on a screen story by Ian Watson and the 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss." - Wikipedia. This was a futuristic world wherein a technology company finally created a thoroughly convincing android with human emotions that imprinted upon its primary user emotionally and as it turns out, irrevocably for eons. The movie depicts how humans treated this android of a little boy as disposable when they had no longer any use for him and disposed of him as others disposed of their useless androids. Their owners thought to simply release them to be on their own instead of decommissioning them. These androids continued to learn from each other in their own rogue communities. They were rounded up, pulled apart and treated in grossly inhumane fashion. They were machines, right? Who cares? It was a spectator sport where folks visited their outrage at all the machines blamed for every misery or resentment at technology harbored by the "Average Joe or Jane". The androids from earlier to later models would huddle and comfort each other as the raucous patriotic? crowd did their worse to these beings. It is as if the more intelligent the androids became, they began to exhibit empathy, a thoroughly and completely human emotion. Again I digress but there is a point.
One of my guiltier pleasures is reading about the idea of a beautiful cyborg man and all the lovely possibilities that can be had if this half-man/half-machine loves, yes, his choice, loves and pleasures a woman . To this author's credit, she can write some mighty fine delectably dirty cyborg sex scenes that impart some incredible side benefits.
For example, Rage, the Model C Cyborg was a fierce beautiful, but really scarred battle and breeding machine. His new cybernetic engineer, Joan Tull is reverent of his being, aware of his sentient intelligence but startled at his lack of trust and overall hatred of human beings. Joan has dealt with the extreme of male misogyny. She had to literally physically fight to be trained as a cybernetic engineer. Males in her world where of the extreme view that "females" did not have the capacity to be engineers. Their brains were not capable as male brains.(Echos of a treatise recently written by a male engineer at Google?) At her duty station in space, along with openly calling her demeaning names, they were violent about it . Her commander instigated hate and violence against her with impunity.
When she met the violent cyborg that was to be her responsibility, she felt instant awe and began to experience desire for him. In her careful ministrations to clean and upgrade his mechanics, she discovered that his previous male handler had physically and sexually abused this being to the point of mutilating his genitalia. Furthermore, she discovered that the other male cybernetic engineers assigned to each cyborg did the same or worse to the half-human/half-machine beings that fought for them, provided them safety and kept them alive. I was sickened.
Is this going to be one the dangers to our human soul of having androids with artificial intelligence? For the most part, there does not seem to be an impulse by man to abuse any other machine or equipment used to insure survival within our story or without. Of course the author maintained continuity of the character of these particular men in their stupidity at abusing the lone female in their midst as they continued in their abuse of the the half-human machines entrusted to their care.
So while this was an erotic and futuristic tale of cyborg love and romance...(Eventually our heroine, Joan endures the absolute worse a woman can endure. The manner in which she was made whole again may upset some. In fact, the whole scenario of her attack is yet, another cause for concern.)
...ultimately, after I read this book, I felt a chill go up my spine and whether intentional or not, there are some warnings made plain by this story.
Judge your leaders by how they treat the most vulnerable around you. Sooner or later you will be vulnerable yourself. Speak out against cruelty to sentient beings. Cruelty is neither logical or good. Cruelty in the end destroys lives, characters and snuffs out the flames of compassion. Maybe if the human world...and the times before this futuristic time in the human world depicted in this book had the intellectual and emotional intelligence of "female" there would not have been so much war with interplanetary species and unnecessary killing. The cyborgs could go back to simply breeding. "Make love not war" ✌️
Always...always have the courage, whether man or woman, to speak out against language, actions and policies that hurt or injure another and have no basis in intellectual understanding...cannot be supported logically with that which we know to be empirically true. Perhaps in this way, our interstellar and interplanetary future will be far brighter than what is imagined so far.
I give this book a 3.5 stars. Again the author clearly has imagination. The erotic scenes sizzled. I thought a derogatory phrase ascribed to the human males was overused to the point of irritation. A huge plot hole or dilemma existed in my mind surrounding the healing substance the cyborgs had in their saliva and body secretions. Surely the men were not that stupid. The creation of new life was not given full attention, and the opportunity to say more was lost here. The ending felt rushed, the story incomplete and little was said about anything changing the future outlook of these worlds after all the meaningful drama.
I take no pleasure in expressing my negative impressions. I'm still soothing my broken heart wondering if all the trauma suffered was worth the read. I, as usual, tend to round up with my 3.5 to 4 stars.