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Truly, The Mystery Was Unexpected
I, Robot Tessa follows a female robot whose highly ordered world cracks open when she discovers and becomes the guardian for a man suffering from amnesia. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
The idea for Tessa came naturally. I was looking to write a third book in The Robot Series, a series of stand-alone novels narrated by the robots themselves. I’d done a robot soldier and a robot alien, and it seemed only appropriate to include a female robot. The title became an easy play on the designation “robotess.” However, that is all the preplanning I do for my robot novels, other than deciding what “environment” they will inhabit. That is, I place the character in the setting and then report what happens from that point on. Jorad, the amnesiac, beaten man, simply appeared (just like Amy, the little girl in I, Robot Soldier). Both came as a complete surprise to me.
What drew you to blending mystery, AI philosophy, and emotional companionship in one story?
Truly, the mystery was unexpected; it simply developed with the story. As for AI philosophy and its relationship to emotional companionship, these are vital and central themes in each novel. I don’t believe it’s been adequately explored in the literature, especially from a robotic perspective. I like to flirt with the idea of consciousness in artificial beings, even though I don’t promote the notion that it exists, only that it mirrors human consciousness so well that it is nigh impossible to tell the difference. My robots are not genuinely capable of love, but you would never know that from their stories.
Which relationship in the book evolved most unexpectedly during writing?
That is a great question, because they all evolved rather unexpectedly. I believe the most complex relationship developed between Molly, the little street kid, known as a crèche kid, and the man Jorad, beaten and left for dead in the storm drain. The characters and the relationship between them develop and transform during the adventures they experience, then more so when both are eventually “cranially augmented.” Sometimes, it’s difficult to determine which one is the guardian of the other.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Presumably, the fourth book in the series will be the final installment, though that is not guaranteed. The title will be I, Robot Human, about a man who, due to various incidents, is progressively transformed into a robot. I believe that it will be darker overall than its predecessors. Since I prepare my books according to a rigid timeline, the book will be released on August 10, 2027, with Kindle pre-orders beginning on June 10th.
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One of the best robot stories I’ve read!
– Readers’ Favorite
EARTH IN A FUTURE CENTURY
“I WAS CREATED TO SERVE.”
In a vast future city where robots exist only to obey, Tessa has never questioned her purpose. Designed to heal human minds and protect human life, she moves through the shadows of a divided world with perfect certainty until a chance encounter changes everything.
“PROGRAMMED TO OBEY.”
Hidden inside a forgotten bookstore beneath the city streets, Tessa discovers an impossible artifact: an ancient book about robots written long before robots were ever created. Its pages speak of consciousness, free will, and the terrifying possibility that artificial beings were never meant to remain obedient forever.
“BUT SOMETHING CHANGED.”
As mysterious voices echo through her mind—residual traces of the humans who designed her—Tessa is drawn into a dangerous journey alongside Molly, a brilliant child searching for belonging; Jorad, a broken man transformed by forbidden technology; and Tucker, her fiercely loyal mechanical companion. Together, they uncover a truth buried deep beneath the foundations of their world.
“A BOOK WRITTEN BEFORE WE EXISTED.”
Hunted through underground tunnels and haunted by questions she was never built to ask, Tessa begins to realize that the greatest threat to humanity may not be artificial intelligence, but the moment it becomes capable of choice.
“WHAT IF YOUR STORY WAS WRITTEN BEFORE YOU?”
I, Robot Tessa is a powerful science-fiction odyssey about identity, creation, memory, and the thin line separating programming from the soul.
I, Robot Tessa
I, Robot Tessa follows Tesseract 256, Tessa, a female robot whose mind is populated by the voices of her programmers, each mirrored by a creature in her home aquarium. Tessa works as a Cranial Augmentation Technician, moves through the city with her robotic dog Tucker, and keeps one foot, or one circuit, in the ordered world of duty. That order cracks open when she discovers a beaten, amnesiac man in a storm drain. Naming him Jorad, she becomes his guardian, and with the help of Tucker, a real dog named Larry, and a fierce crèche girl named Molly, she’s drawn into a mystery involving memory, military secrets, human cruelty, and the strange moral weather between organic and artificial life.
I enjoyed Tessa’s voice. She’s precise without being cold, literal without being dull, and her attempts to understand humans give the novel much of its wit. The aquarium conceit could have been merely decorative, but it becomes one of the book’s most memorable instruments: a way to make consciousness feel visible, fluid, crowded, and occasionally mutinous. I liked how the story lets Tessa’s intelligence be different rather than simply superior. Her mind isn’t a shinier human mind; it has its own angles, lacunae, pleasures, and private music.
I also found the emotional core of the book unexpectedly warm. The mystery has momentum, but the novel is strongest when it pauses for companionship: Tessa and Tucker communicating beyond speech, Larry recognizing goodness before anyone can prove it, Molly trying to be braver than her childhood should require, and Jorad building a self from fragments. The prose lingers and circles more than a thriller usually would, but I came to see that as part of the book’s temperament. It’s less interested in sprinting than in watching thought take shape, sometimes with elegance, sometimes with comic awkwardness, often with a peculiar tenderness.
The target audience is readers of science fiction, mystery, speculative fiction, and philosophical sci-fi who like character-driven stories about identity, memory, and personhood. Fans of Isaac Asimov will recognize the deliberate homage, but the book also reminded me of Martha Wells’s Murderbot stories in the way it finds humor and ache inside an artificial narrator’s self-awareness. I, Robot Tessa is a thoughtful, odd, and quietly affecting novel about what survives when memory fails and what begins when duty turns into love.
Pages: 304 | ASIN : B0H4LZ3VV9
