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Virtual Girl
In an illegal experiment, Arnold develops his perfect companion--a robot named Maggie. She's everything he ever wanted in a woman, but when they become separated, Maggie learns more about people and herself than Arnold planned. Soon she must decide if she's just a collection of microchips, or a person in her own right.
248 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1993
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465 people want to read
About the author
Amy Thomson
24 books64 followersAmy Thompson is an American science fiction writer. In 1994 she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Most of her work is considered hard science fiction and contains feminist and environmental themes.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 26, 2009
Maggie is a sentient being, a product of a virtual reality program that is extremely illegal in the near future. Arnold, her creator, and Maggie get separated during a violent incident and Maggie is forced to fend for herself and learn what it is to be her own person.
A light, fun read.
A light, fun read.
September 26, 2019
I read this book when I was 13, and remember only some of it, but here are the compelling things about it that have stuck with me ever since!
-the AI girl at the heart of this book is created to be basically a companion and lover to her creator, who fantasizes about shaping a person in his image. Some kind of crisis elapses, however, and Maggie, the AI, recalibrates her essential program structure to prioritize self-preservation over serving her creator. There's a passage that describes her command structure becoming more organic and elegant than her creator had planned and protecting a core of self-preservation imperitave at its heart in a place her creator can't even see.
-she escapes her creator or her creator gets arrested for making an illegal AI (can't remember) and ends up broken down in the desert for a while and basically sleeping inside her body because her batteries ran out but then gets found and goes on a road trip and ends up in a flooded but fantastical an ever-partying New Orleans
-the vulnerability of living in a woman's body or what appears to be a woman's body while not really being a woman per se is addressed a lot in this text
-Maggie hooks up with a trans woman whose pronouns change a lot because this is written by a cis person in the 1990s but it's a really good scene and very sweet and gay. The trans woman is the first person she comes out to as a robot and there's a moment where they sort of come out to each other.
-I think she helps an AI that is living in a library computer get a body but it has been so long since I read this book that I can't be sure
-the AI girl at the heart of this book is created to be basically a companion and lover to her creator, who fantasizes about shaping a person in his image. Some kind of crisis elapses, however, and Maggie, the AI, recalibrates her essential program structure to prioritize self-preservation over serving her creator. There's a passage that describes her command structure becoming more organic and elegant than her creator had planned and protecting a core of self-preservation imperitave at its heart in a place her creator can't even see.
-she escapes her creator or her creator gets arrested for making an illegal AI (can't remember) and ends up broken down in the desert for a while and basically sleeping inside her body because her batteries ran out but then gets found and goes on a road trip and ends up in a flooded but fantastical an ever-partying New Orleans
-the vulnerability of living in a woman's body or what appears to be a woman's body while not really being a woman per se is addressed a lot in this text
-Maggie hooks up with a trans woman whose pronouns change a lot because this is written by a cis person in the 1990s but it's a really good scene and very sweet and gay. The trans woman is the first person she comes out to as a robot and there's a moment where they sort of come out to each other.
-I think she helps an AI that is living in a library computer get a body but it has been so long since I read this book that I can't be sure
October 29, 2015
This book is about Maggie, the first android built. No one has done it before, in part because Building AI's has been made illegal. She was made to be an innocent and caring companion; she is built intentionally to be naive and unworldly.
I worry I got defensive over a message I imagined and it has prevented me from judging this book accurately.
The message in this book seems to me to be white people are corrupted by privilege and prejudice, while minorities are virtuous victims of society. The characters just seem like caricatures, it felt like manufacturing evidence rather than showing truths about human nature. On top of that I found the technobabble to be a bit forced and unrealistic. Maggie to be utterly unconvincing to me as an android. Maggie does work as a naive, innocent observer, but she is far too childlike and human.
I worry I got defensive over a message I imagined and it has prevented me from judging this book accurately.
The message in this book seems to me to be white people are corrupted by privilege and prejudice, while minorities are virtuous victims of society. The characters just seem like caricatures, it felt like manufacturing evidence rather than showing truths about human nature. On top of that I found the technobabble to be a bit forced and unrealistic. Maggie to be utterly unconvincing to me as an android. Maggie does work as a naive, innocent observer, but she is far too childlike and human.
August 20, 2017
I love old sci fi. In this the future is 2018, and AIs are illegal. But there's no wifi, no mobile phones, and there are still public phone booths.
That aside this is a fun book. It's a classic tale of a doll who wants to live, so much so that it directly references The Velveteen Rabbit. Throw in some hobo adventures and her making friends with queer prostitutes and you've got a ripper of a yarn.
That aside this is a fun book. It's a classic tale of a doll who wants to live, so much so that it directly references The Velveteen Rabbit. Throw in some hobo adventures and her making friends with queer prostitutes and you've got a ripper of a yarn.
January 7, 2019
This is a book that I wish I could say I enjoyed more than I did. Written in 1993, it's difficult to delve into now because the basic plot has been covered several times in the intervening years, primarily in film: Her, A.I., and Ex Machina (among others) all cover very similar territory.
We get the lone, introverted genius designing his "ideal woman," Maggie (inevitably reminiscent of Pygmalion); her slow progression through understanding her own consciousness and embodied existence; her inevitable parting from her creator, resulting in a road trip section in which she meets people who help her cope; and a reunion with said creator who continues to think of her very much as his creation, with consequences she must counter for her own survival.
There's nothing wrong with this story, of course--it's really, at this point, a worthy standard of science fiction, and Virtual Girl obviously preceded the films I'm referencing. But those intervening works do make it difficult to re-capture the freshness the novel probably deserved at the time. It also embraces a cyberpunk portrayal of the online world which tends to date it (and may have done so even in 1993).
Thomson clearly put some effort into portraying Maggie's life as a homeless person (in fact, she references the importance of that here), and that emphasis does make the book stand out. She also includes a transgender character who would not meet expectations of a novel written today, but whose portrayal is more sympathetic than one would expect of a novel written when it was. (This is a sensitive issue, of course, so I would respect anyone who disagreed with that assessment.)
(Also: Thomson's portrayal of Arnold and his gendered assumptions is consistently spot-on, and has the unfortunate effect in 2018 of making the book feel LESS dated.)
What ultimately holds the novel back, though, is the author's style, which is a bit hard to describe. I don't mean to be unfairly critical, but the style simply feels.... let's say "unpolished." There is heart in this book, and I respect it for that, but the lack of polish in the novel's style ultimately hamstrings what it's trying to accomplish. To be fair to the book--and I want to be--it is a first novel, but the problem remains and may limit what the reader will get from it.
We get the lone, introverted genius designing his "ideal woman," Maggie (inevitably reminiscent of Pygmalion); her slow progression through understanding her own consciousness and embodied existence; her inevitable parting from her creator, resulting in a road trip section in which she meets people who help her cope; and a reunion with said creator who continues to think of her very much as his creation, with consequences she must counter for her own survival.
There's nothing wrong with this story, of course--it's really, at this point, a worthy standard of science fiction, and Virtual Girl obviously preceded the films I'm referencing. But those intervening works do make it difficult to re-capture the freshness the novel probably deserved at the time. It also embraces a cyberpunk portrayal of the online world which tends to date it (and may have done so even in 1993).
Thomson clearly put some effort into portraying Maggie's life as a homeless person (in fact, she references the importance of that here), and that emphasis does make the book stand out. She also includes a transgender character who would not meet expectations of a novel written today, but whose portrayal is more sympathetic than one would expect of a novel written when it was. (This is a sensitive issue, of course, so I would respect anyone who disagreed with that assessment.)
(Also: Thomson's portrayal of Arnold and his gendered assumptions is consistently spot-on, and has the unfortunate effect in 2018 of making the book feel LESS dated.)
What ultimately holds the novel back, though, is the author's style, which is a bit hard to describe. I don't mean to be unfairly critical, but the style simply feels.... let's say "unpolished." There is heart in this book, and I respect it for that, but the lack of polish in the novel's style ultimately hamstrings what it's trying to accomplish. To be fair to the book--and I want to be--it is a first novel, but the problem remains and may limit what the reader will get from it.
November 14, 2025
Feels like a very tame and less murdery version of Ex Machina, but written from the perspective of the robot.
Nowhere near as good as her masterpiece, The Color of Distance, Virtual Girl follows the birth and growth of Maggie, an AI plugged into the body of an android. Her creator, a runaway heir to an AI company, designs her to be the perfect companion who will meet his every need.
Amy Thomson thrives at writing character-driven stories that let her characters grow and evolve. In The Color of Distance, we watch the entire cast develop in meaningful ways. Here, though, Maggie struggles to carry that weight alone. None of the other characters are as well-crafted, leaving them feeling hollow by comparison. Even Maggie isn’t without issues. Throughout the book, we’re told again and again that she doesn’t feel she has a purpose—yet by the end, that arc feels tacked on.
There are plenty of intriguing ideas Thomson raises that could’ve been amazing. At one point, for example, Maggie is copied and watches her original self die. It’s a horrific, fascinating moment, and one that could’ve been explored much more deeply, but it ends up being swept aside. Another missed opportunity would be the complex feelings of romance/sexual attraction that the characters dance around. Why that was talked about so often but never really explored is beyond me.
This isn’t to say the whole book is negative. It has a lot of heart. Maggie’s journey, along with the characters and friendships she forms, is fun and engaging. They never feel too deep—at least in my opinion—but they do have a unique vibe. I just found myself wishing for more. The world is so interesting and there’s so many different ways it could be explored.
While rather aimless and imperfect, this is a perfectly fine first novel, and you can tell Thomson has interesting ideas she’s working through, even if she never fully sticks the landing.
Nowhere near as good as her masterpiece, The Color of Distance, Virtual Girl follows the birth and growth of Maggie, an AI plugged into the body of an android. Her creator, a runaway heir to an AI company, designs her to be the perfect companion who will meet his every need.
Amy Thomson thrives at writing character-driven stories that let her characters grow and evolve. In The Color of Distance, we watch the entire cast develop in meaningful ways. Here, though, Maggie struggles to carry that weight alone. None of the other characters are as well-crafted, leaving them feeling hollow by comparison. Even Maggie isn’t without issues. Throughout the book, we’re told again and again that she doesn’t feel she has a purpose—yet by the end, that arc feels tacked on.
There are plenty of intriguing ideas Thomson raises that could’ve been amazing. At one point, for example, Maggie is copied and watches her original self die. It’s a horrific, fascinating moment, and one that could’ve been explored much more deeply, but it ends up being swept aside. Another missed opportunity would be the complex feelings of romance/sexual attraction that the characters dance around. Why that was talked about so often but never really explored is beyond me.
This isn’t to say the whole book is negative. It has a lot of heart. Maggie’s journey, along with the characters and friendships she forms, is fun and engaging. They never feel too deep—at least in my opinion—but they do have a unique vibe. I just found myself wishing for more. The world is so interesting and there’s so many different ways it could be explored.
While rather aimless and imperfect, this is a perfectly fine first novel, and you can tell Thomson has interesting ideas she’s working through, even if she never fully sticks the landing.
December 8, 2018
I sought Virtual Girl out after seeing it listed on a top list for AI fiction. The plot setup sounded like a feminist parable and Arnold's messed up perspective on women and their loss of "innocence" certainly seemed to lean in the direction of Maggie overriding her original creator's intent and finding agency. It does eventually go that way but it drags out the climatic decision and rising action so that by the time she wakes up to what she is losing by depending on Arnold the book is basically over. Also, this ain't a hard boiled sci fi here as seen in the....poetic descriptions of how AI programming works.
But structure and computer science accuracy issues aside, this was compulsively readable and I finished it in two sittings. Maggie's awakening to the human condition was handled with emotionally resonant finesse and you couldn't help but be drawn into every chapter hoping to glean more of her fish out of water perspective. I also really liked her little robot/AI communion with Turing and I honestly would have loved more prose dedicated to her relaying her experiences of human life. Robots just wanna have fun!
But structure and computer science accuracy issues aside, this was compulsively readable and I finished it in two sittings. Maggie's awakening to the human condition was handled with emotionally resonant finesse and you couldn't help but be drawn into every chapter hoping to glean more of her fish out of water perspective. I also really liked her little robot/AI communion with Turing and I honestly would have loved more prose dedicated to her relaying her experiences of human life. Robots just wanna have fun!
November 7, 2021
Virtual Girl could have been a predictable Frankenstein story about the creation of a human-like AI mannequin and bad people trying to wrest control of it from its maker.
Fortunately, Amy Thomson avoided most of the tropes of the Frankenstein genre and brought us a deft combination of Pinnochio and a near-future road tale. In Arnold, we see a not-so-mad scientist on the run with his self-aware AI companion in a world where AI is illegal. After a particularly harrowing incident, the AI companion (Maggie) is left to fend for herself in the desert southwest, New Orleans, and ultimately New York City.
Although the book might have benefited from a bit more detail, it was a fun read and definitely worth more than the cover blurb "Excellent Novel" supplied by Larry Niven. I had an idea of what would happen next at nearly every stage but was proved wrong by Thomson's unpredictable tale. My only real criticism for this book is that the last two or three chapters seemed a little rushed. That said, I recommend Virtual Girl highly.
Fortunately, Amy Thomson avoided most of the tropes of the Frankenstein genre and brought us a deft combination of Pinnochio and a near-future road tale. In Arnold, we see a not-so-mad scientist on the run with his self-aware AI companion in a world where AI is illegal. After a particularly harrowing incident, the AI companion (Maggie) is left to fend for herself in the desert southwest, New Orleans, and ultimately New York City.
Although the book might have benefited from a bit more detail, it was a fun read and definitely worth more than the cover blurb "Excellent Novel" supplied by Larry Niven. I had an idea of what would happen next at nearly every stage but was proved wrong by Thomson's unpredictable tale. My only real criticism for this book is that the last two or three chapters seemed a little rushed. That said, I recommend Virtual Girl highly.
March 26, 2022
They should have called this book “The boring Adventures of Robo-hobo.”
Guy makes a robot and they become rail hopping hobos (but it’s the future so they’re hover trains… oooooooh). Robot gets separated from him and travels the country meeting the poor, homeless, and social outcasts. Then robot meets a sentient library computer and finds her own kind. Yay.
There’s very little forward momentum in the story and the ending rushes through a bunch of stuff in two chapters with a hokey resolution. Parts of this had potential for interesting looks at sentience and life but it’s more concerned with Robo-sex and surface level analysis. Not gonna lie, it was a slog to get through and I almost quit many times but I stuck it out and I recommend you confine this to the dustbins of history where it belongs.
Oh yeah the robots entire ai program of life fits in a few cd roms! And she backs up her memories to more cd Roms too. Remember those!
Guy makes a robot and they become rail hopping hobos (but it’s the future so they’re hover trains… oooooooh). Robot gets separated from him and travels the country meeting the poor, homeless, and social outcasts. Then robot meets a sentient library computer and finds her own kind. Yay.
There’s very little forward momentum in the story and the ending rushes through a bunch of stuff in two chapters with a hokey resolution. Parts of this had potential for interesting looks at sentience and life but it’s more concerned with Robo-sex and surface level analysis. Not gonna lie, it was a slog to get through and I almost quit many times but I stuck it out and I recommend you confine this to the dustbins of history where it belongs.
Oh yeah the robots entire ai program of life fits in a few cd roms! And she backs up her memories to more cd Roms too. Remember those!
October 9, 2024
Pity I can't give it three and a half stars. For a 1993 SF book about AI it holds up very well. The character development of Maggie is interesting as she 'evolves'. Arnold far less so as the stereotype white, fat, unkept white geek. The sentient programs in this world are also a nice touch.
The narrative style did not work for me as well as it has in other books and I'm struggling to pinpoint why. Perhaps there weren't enough cliffhangers in the relatively short paragraphs or they told a story blandly.
Is there a happy ending? Let's say it's not predictable but I feel some incredibly sad/gut wrenching or the other end of the scale 'homecoming queen meets quarterback' might have been better.
The narrative style did not work for me as well as it has in other books and I'm struggling to pinpoint why. Perhaps there weren't enough cliffhangers in the relatively short paragraphs or they told a story blandly.
Is there a happy ending? Let's say it's not predictable but I feel some incredibly sad/gut wrenching or the other end of the scale 'homecoming queen meets quarterback' might have been better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 17, 2019
This is a very different take on how a self-aware program might deal with the human world. There are a few explicit sexual scenes so this book is definitely not for the young crowd. There are a few oddities concerning how a computer program might 'feel' as it probes a network. Overall though, this was a good book.
November 4, 2016
Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson was an enjoyable read on many different levels: literary theory, the way the book was written (narratology), and the exploration of Maggie’s role in society. I definitely enjoyed the second half of the novel more when Maggie was able to grow into her character and develop her own sense of the world. While I see many parallels between programming and socialization, her exploration of the world provided Maggie with the opportunity to become her own three dimensional character.
This relationship continually threatens the monopoly Arnold could have had on the story, from her first moment ‘alive’ Maggie begins to destabilize Arnold’s power. It is through these sections of her own thoughts that the readers are able to get a sense of Maggie as person and not simply as Arnold’s creation. Arnold’s desire for Maggie to represent not only the innocence in the world, but also an ‘innocent woman’ reminded me of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”. Arnold believes that Maggie is untarnished and ‘whole’, he views her as a figure from Eden among all the corruption he sees in the world. Arnold is incapable of separating Maggie firstly from any other robot he will make, and secondly, from any other iteration of Maggie.
If you want to read my complete thoughts: https://utopia-state-of-mind.com/?p=201
This relationship continually threatens the monopoly Arnold could have had on the story, from her first moment ‘alive’ Maggie begins to destabilize Arnold’s power. It is through these sections of her own thoughts that the readers are able to get a sense of Maggie as person and not simply as Arnold’s creation. Arnold’s desire for Maggie to represent not only the innocence in the world, but also an ‘innocent woman’ reminded me of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”. Arnold believes that Maggie is untarnished and ‘whole’, he views her as a figure from Eden among all the corruption he sees in the world. Arnold is incapable of separating Maggie firstly from any other robot he will make, and secondly, from any other iteration of Maggie.
If you want to read my complete thoughts: https://utopia-state-of-mind.com/?p=201
May 19, 2015
Utlá scifi knížka, kdy se dozvíte mnoho o tom jaké to je mít vlastní vědomí. Od prvních krůčku hlavní hrdinky po její učení se jak zpracovávat informace. Celé to má mnoho krásných paralel s lidskou psychikou. A navíc napsané je to tak, že vás příběh pohltí a nepustí. S hlavní hrdinkou jsem se divila, smála i byla nešťastná.
February 10, 2023
I read this years ago, but it's a story that has stuck with me despite being mediocre. I thought that the majority of the characters were flat and the plot was OK.There was some sex that I thought was rather pointless and didn't add anything to the story line... but I can't say much other than that, since it's been at least a decade since I read it.
January 10, 2013
If it was possible to give this book a negative star rating, I would be inclined to give it negative a million, billion stars. One of the worst stories I have ever read. Just.... mind-numbingly pointless.
July 29, 2009
AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL. A travesty. Who let this one out of the publishing house?
maybe-read-sometime
October 4, 2011It just wasn't working for me. The cover was slightly off-putting, I think. Wish I could remember what it's an homage to. Marilyn Monroe? I think that's nor right, though.
October 22, 2011
I'm a sucker for a hot robot babe anyday, but this was a good story too.
December 13, 2011
An interesting approach to the concept of artificial intelligence.
May 5, 2013
At times an interesting exploration of an AI acquiring sentience and societal function; unfortunately, a plot often less interesting, with seriously large technological holes.
February 2, 2017
Turing passes the Turing test lol
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews