Of Monsters and Mainframes
by Barbara Truelove
A Message from My Daughter
One day, I received the following Discord statements from my beloved offspring, Emelia:
- I just finished a book called Of Monsters and Mainframes
- I would like you to read it and report to me as you read it.
- I would like you to avoid looking into what the book is about as much as possible.
Andy Is Complient
My only regret in fulfilling Emelia’s request is that I’d read a few posts about Of Monsters and Mainframes on Bluesky and knew one thing I would have been delighted to learn as a surprise. There were still plenty of unexpected elements though.
If you like sci-fi at all, enjoy surprises, and are willing to follow my advice, stop reading this and go start it.
Try not to read the official copy for it. It spoils way too much.
So does the rest of this post.
Read this book if you…
- Enjoy stories about spaceships.
- Enjoy references to Victorian monsters.
- Think Victorian monsters IN SPACE is an excellent mashup idea.
- Think an autistic-presenting AI main character sounds charming.
- Can dismiss any knee-jerk reactions against AIs by remembering this book is about MONSTERS.
- Understand why I found it hilarious when one AI character started cursing in HTML.
Victorian Monsters in Space
Our story starts with a ship named Demeter being puzzled by a recurring error code. She can’t identify its source and tries to dismiss it. But the error message won’t stop popping up. Gradually, she begins to suspect something is very, very wrong. All of her systems are fine, but at some point, she realizes her passengers are behaving oddly. Or not behaving. At all. In fact… Are they all dead? Huh. That’s weird…
Her memory files are missing. Her humans are dead. The AI in the medbay is annoying. And the other ships already make fun of her. And now everyone says she’s defective. Or cursed…
Over several flights between Earth and the colonies, unfortunate things just keep happening to poor Demeter. And the unspeakable horror behind that first voyage is growing into a serious threat to others. Demeter makes friends and allies, but how is one ship and a handful of monstrous crew going to defeat one of the most famous of all great evils?
Lots of Stars
I don’t give star ratings on here, but if I did, this would get a lot of them.
Also, it’s set in space. And Demeter’s primary skill is celestial navigation. So it involves a lot of stars…
Yeah, so the humor and wit of this book are much better than that.
Demeter has an interesting perspective. She’s not an AI trying to be human, and wouldn’t know where to start if she were. This gives her observations an interesting mixture of detachment, simplification, and misunderstanding. This results in a unique blend of humor and insight. As she forms attachments to other characters without fully understanding why it’s happening, she never loses that otherness. She frequently comes across as autistic, although of course the label isn’t accurate for an AI. She’s unable to properly process graphics, though, and is consequently unable to read any visual clues as to human emotion. She has to actively work on learning how to associate tones and pitches in people’s voices with emotions. And she struggles to teach herself how to address people to get the desired results from them, whether that’s cheering them up, getting them to do their homework, or convincing them to hurry to the airlock and flush the being trying to break in from it RIGHT NOW.
The POV shifts away from Demeter at multiple times. The medbay AI, Stewart, has sections where we can compare their thought-structure to Demeter’s. Stewart’s programming includes a better understanding of humans as well as the ability to process graphic input, and they come across closer to a neurotypical human due to these things. Their relationship with Demeter is charming in the extreme and I personally really connected to their attachment to their tea paraphernalia. I also appreciated their eventual realization that while they have people-skills Demeter never will, they’re crap at navigation and she’s a genius at it.
Other characters granted POV include a werewolf, a vampire, a group-consciousness of shapeshifting insects, and a monster created from the combined DNA of the victims of the first voyage. They all have unique voices and perspectives.
Quietly Queer
This book isn’t as openly and loudly diverse as most of what I read. But as established, Demeter functions largely as an autistic viewpoint (and I find the idea that autism is just having a different set of operating codes to be positive), Stewart is nonbinary (even though their code isn’t! Ha! Computer joke!), and two of the organic characters enter a same-sex marriage.
Content Summaries
Cozy/Intense Scale: (5 is OMG! INTENSE! And 1 is So Cozy You Can Fall Asleep To It)
3ish? Considering the story starts with a monster killing an entire passenger ship full of people, the book is rather chill. There are segments that jump up to 4-5 level intensity and I had trouble putting the book down the entire read, but I never felt particularly agitated. Except for that one thing that gutted me…
Spice Level: (0-5) 1? But only if you think light kissing should be noted.
Representation: autistic(?) lead, nonbinary love interest, bi/pan character (maybe?), lesbian character (maybe?), group-consciousness character
Advisories: The book contains lots of death, including that of minor charcters. There isn’t too much gore, but there are occassional bursts of description that could make someone uneasy. One character is a group consciousness comprised of insects, which is the reason I haven’t made my wife read the book. There’s a Lovecraftian cult and Lovecraftian mutations of cult members. There is a section where a character is compelled to perform actions they don’t wish to perform. And whatever you want to flag nonconsentual code optimization of a self-aware AI as happens.
Sold?
Normally I have purchase links here, but this book is widely distributed via traditional channels, so in this case I will simply tell you to go find it at your preferred mainstream bookseller.
