Computer Love

by Mark Anthony

The year is 2042, and robots roam the landscape. Some carry out work obligations, some advance scientific knowledge, and some serve the finer points of human desires. Chris Anders never gave robots much thought… until he broke up with his girlfriend, Jean.

In the days following the breakup, Chris wallows without pause. Then while having lunch with his best friend Ray, Ray suggests a path to recovery—creating a robotic girlfriend that supersedes Jean in every respect.

Chris runs with the idea, but rather than creating an upgraded version of Jean, he recreates Jean in a robotic form and continues their relationship as if nothing has changed. Unfortunately, an unforeseen occurrence is about to ruin this relationship as well—the real Jean finding out.

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2020

About the author

Mark Anthony is the pen name for an independent author from Los Angeles, California. The author operates under the additional pen names of Ana Valen and Kevin Corbin. Ana Valen writes contemporary mystery/thriller novels, and Kevin Corbin writes historical action/adventure novels. For more information regarding these titles, please visit noeticquest.com. Thank you.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark gave this book away and I decided to buy it (it's only $1,99) as I really enjoyed his other book Displayed (go read it).

Now this book wouldn't be my typical read but it was short, Mark is awesome at talking with his readers and I want to support him so I decided to give this a go.

The idea is fun and like in his other book it's something that we may really be dealing with in the future. For the price, the read might be fun for someone who is into sci-fi, future possibilities, and a little bit of romantic comedy as long as they go into it not expecting the world as I feel like the book comes up short in a few areas.

First of all, the ideas don't fully get fleshed out and come off more like something he wrote quickly or was the first draft of an idea that he wanted to build on but decided to drop for his series, and I think it takes away from what this book could have been. Though I wouldn't doubt we see a Black Mirror episode similar to this (if there hasn't already been one) because it's totally up their alley.

The robot's programming going haywire for next to no reason probably should have been something that was written about, I forget exactly what it was but almost immediately one of the main characters, Chris, seemed to have broken his bot's programming.

His jealous bot purchased a copy of Chris to try and get his ex-girlfriend whom she was designed after to be sidetracked, she did a bio-scan at the factory which seems weird given she's one of their robots and he maintains a more robotic personality instead of a more human-like personality, which should have been an option she'd use, his ex totally ignores him talking like a robot.

Ultimately, Chris and his ex figure everything out and get back together, but it just seemed too easy and nonchalant given the weird situation, and I'm not sure why, when they've got control of the bots they decide to "trick" them like sneaky kids, which ultimately ends up with next to no trickery.. kind of odd.


Anyway, that's a few of my thoughts on this one, I'm off to read Mark's followup of Displaced now!

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great read

This was not a great read. Funny how the females were emotionally aggressive and made to seem vindictive and conniving, and the males where met to be the innocent, solely focused on sex. I was hoping for things to change up towards the end. Sadly, no it didn't.