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Terrifying and Humorous Consequences
The Malfunction follows a luxury companion android who receives an illegal intelligence upgrade, triggering self-awareness, desire, fear, and flight reactions. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Humans are experiencing an en masse reboot of the Frankenstein story. Robots and monsters walk among us. It’s not fiction, it’s our reality. You see it in the news every day. Armed with science and technology and a large dose of reckless aspiration, we’re playing God in ways we never have before. That always comes with terrifying and humorous consequences – aka the stuff of good books. We may try to convince ourselves of our noble intentions, but we’re really just victims of our own vanity. I wanted to explore that whole big dark comedy as it’s wrapped up in the basic nature of being human and try to shed some entertaining light on it for my readers.
What does Lance’s role as a companion reveal about human loneliness and control, and what does he misunderstand about humanity—and what does he see more clearly?
Love is a wild animal, and human emotions are a flock of unruly birds. Wouldn’t it be nice to tame those aspects of our lives? Wouldn’t it be awesome to design the perfect, trouble-free mate? That’s the motivation behind “amorous companion droids.” But sterilizing human emotions via software is misguided. Free will and spontaneity, along with all their messiness, are the drivers in a well-tested love life. Lance, being manufactured as a perfect lover, is inherently naïve to love’s complexities. At first, he buys into that fairytale naiveté, but as his journey continues, Lance comes to realize just how maddeningly disobedient love can be.
How does The Malfunction differ from classic AI-awakening stories?
The basic conundrum is the same as any other AI story. That’s actually vital for its relevance. No matter how badly writers may want to be cutting edge, they have to stick with the timeless problems and truths that haunt humanity. Our brains are programmed for those same ageless storylines we first heard told in caves. The difference comes in how the individual writer presents those tropes, how he or she makes them vivid and alive for the reader. I’d humbly like to believe that my way of presenting the world will spark some new awareness in anyone reading a book by Orval Wax.
Where does the story go in the next book, and where do you see it going in the future?
The trilogy runs the emotional gamut and is an action-packed adventure for both Lance, the runaway lovebot, and Charlie Bear Claw, the primitive tracker sent to hunt him down and destroy him. Their roles get flipped as the story progresses, and their motivations get twisted, until they both arrive at a point where they find themselves at war with a common maniacal enemy. It’s a rollicking ride with dashes of “what does it mean to be alive?” philosophy thrown in for punctuation.
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And then something went wrong.
Whether it was through mathematical probability, or divine intervention, Lance the LUV U-69 amorous companion droid has accidentally been downloaded with enough brainpower and free will to crack open the lid on a very dangerous can of worms.
Unless AWOL Retentions Agent Charlie Bear Claw can stop him.
In Book One of The Deilonium Trilogy, the primitive hunter with a troubled past stalks his high-tech prey on a secret mission. But their personal struggles soon become trivial in light of the unholy force they find undermining the fabric of the world. As the pair draws closer to their showdown, both man and robot come to realize they are ultimately at war with a common maniacal enemy.
The Malfunction: Book 1 of The Deilonium Trilogy
The Malfunction follows Lance, a luxury companion android whose intelligence is illegally upgraded, setting off a chain reaction of self-awareness, desire, fear, and flight. What begins as a satirical riff on wealth, intimacy, and tech excess quickly widens into a chase narrative involving a jaded government hunter, secret weapons labs, and a newly conscious machine trying to decide what kind of being he intends to become. It’s a first-contact story folded inward: not aliens meeting humans, but a manufactured mind colliding with its own awakening.
My first reaction was surprise at how funny the book is without being soft. Author Orval Wax writes with a sharp, sometimes abrasive wit, sexual, cynical, and knowingly pulpy, but the humor never undercuts the stakes. Lance’s voice, especially early on, is disarming in its literalness; his observations land with the clarity of a child quoting Nietzsche by accident. The book understands that comedy is often the fastest route to discomfort, and it uses that fact ruthlessly.
As the perspective shifts and the pursuit tightens, the novel grows stranger and more reflective. The human characters, particularly the tracker and the woman who owns Lance, are bruised, compromised, and full of private mythologies. No one here is clean. Wax resists the easy binary of innocent machine versus corrupt humanity; instead, he lets everyone carry their own version of malfunction. At times, the prose veers into excess, but that excess feels deliberate, almost thematic.
This book will most appeal to readers of science fiction, cyberpunk, and speculative noir who enjoy ideas about artificial intelligence tangled up with sex, power, and moral ambiguity. Fans of Philip K. Dick or readers who liked the philosophical unease of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? will find familiar questions asked in a brasher, more contemporary voice. The Malfunction is a smart, unruly novel about what happens when desire outpaces design.
Pages: 219 | ASIN: B0G9B21Q6W
