Half Broken But Fully Awesome

Set in a world devastated by war, plague, and pestilence, Suzanne Palmer’s new novel Ode To The Half Broken is the story of a solitary robot with a dark past who has hidden itself away from the woes of the world, living in a small shack and studying the lives of insects. In the opening chapters, the robot (who has no name) is knocked out of their routine due to an attack by bandits and is forced to go on the road to recover their missing leg.

Palmer — who made a name for herself with Hugo-winning novelettes about robots The Secret Lives of Bots and Bots of the Lost Ark — tells the robot’s story in a fairly breezy cadence, interspersing road trip-style chapters with flashbacks to the scientists who built the robot (and who are in part responsible for global devastation). It’s an engaging and enjoyable read that could be described as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven by way of Clifford D. Simak’s 1952 novel City.

The road-trip format of the novel provides an effective tool to explore various facets of how society has collapsed. From train trips through plague towns, to cities ruined by environmental disasters, to survivor settlements eking out an existence. Palmer paints a portrait of a world that (other than the existence of sentient robots) feels all too possible. It’s a world that, like the protagonist in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, fell apart slowly and then all at once. Environmental collapse prompted small international conflicts, which disrupted the food supply, which led to civil wars. Each piece of this domino chain feels possible. There is, however, a bit of American-centric myopia with the worldbuilding. Even in a world where the United States no longer exists, most relevant events seem to take place within the boundaries of what used to be that country. This is, however, a minor quibble that would likely only bother readers outside the United States.

What elevates Ode To The Half Broken are the characters. Though the story is mostly from the perspective of the unnamed robot, the book is littered with fun supporting characters including a gruff uplifted dog who goes by the name of Atticus, and an inquisitive human mechanic named Murph. There’s a hopeful undertone throughout the book; that although the world may have been broken, something worthwhile is still worth striving towards if the survivors can work together. A lot of attention is paid to the social mores of a world in which robots, uplifted animals, and a smattering of humans coexist uneasily with each other. The etiquette depicted for robot-human interactions is clearly based on real-world situations, but Palmer has provided interesting nuances. This is a thoughtful look about how beings who sense, experience, and interpret the world very differently might relate to each other.

There are occasional leans on a sort of technobabble, in which various characters provide unconvincing explanations about things like software architecture and chip design being the precursor to robots developing consciousness and free will. While this old-school vibe might appeal to some readers, it can knock others out of the narrative. Thankfully, these segments become less frequent as the novel progresses.

Books about post-apocalyptic robots questioning their purposes are having a moment. As we have previously observed it’s understandable why such narratives might appeal. These works have ranged from the despairing Sea of Rust, to the hopeful Monk and Robot. Much like its title suggests, Ode To The Half Broken falls somewhere right about halfway along that spectrum of hope to despair. This a very fine addition to the growing subgenre, and one we recommend highly.

The Do-Nothing Machine Wakes

Over the past few years, there has been a spate of novels focused on the fate of robots who have been left behind after a cataclysm has mostly wiped out humanity. Examples include C. Robert Cargill’s western Sea of Rust, Charles Stross’ adventure yarns Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood, and Adrian Tchaikovksy’s comedic romp Service Model.

This is not an entirely new premise — one only needs to look back at Clifford D. Simak’s City or “Who Can Replace a Man?” by Brian Aldiss to find an earlier example — but it does seem to us that it has become more prevalent of late. Moreover, such stories seem to have become more melancholic.

Although critics question Graeber's
findings, it's clear that his book
resonated with many readers. 
(Image via Wikipedia)

We have a theory why.

The post-apocalyptic robot story offers a reflection on technological advancement’s latest separation of the worker from meaningful labour in their employment. At a time when many in North America perceive that Large Language Models and generative AI are undermining the creative industries and even workplace creativity itself, perhaps these stories resonate more. It is reminiscent of the deindustrialization of high income countries and the resulting rising in inequality of the 1970s and 1980s and how that shift created an audience ready for what cyberpunk offered.

For decades, the robot in most science fiction stories was depicted as being purpose-built to serve humanity. Notwithstanding the problematic nature of treating sentient beings as servile and free of rights, Asmiov’s robots found meaning and satisfaction in their work. In the post-apocalyptic robot story, the work continues but the meaning and the satisfaction of their labours are gone. There is no liberating aspect to humanity’s absence; the protagonists are faced with a continuation of systems that have lost their reason for existing.

If the Asimovian robot story is a metaphor for workers in a standard employment relationship, then perhaps the post-apocalyptic robot story holds up a mirror to what David Graeber describes in his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.

Graeber defined a bullshit job as “A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence.” To be clear, he didn’t mean unpleasant or low-paid jobs (Garbage collection isn’t high-paying, and it is not a task anyone does for fun, but nobody would question whether or not it’s necessary, it is therefore not “bullshit”). The issue is not whether a job is enjoyable or even prestigious, but whether it serves a purpose that produces a sense of meaning and accomplishment for the employee. Examples he gives of “bullshit jobs” are employees who create paperwork or reports to give the appearance that something useful is happening, or managers whose primary purpose is supervising people who do not require supervision. Jobs that have become less relevant due to changing technology or societal value or priority shifts. In essence gains of productivity in the past few decades, Graeber argues, have not led to increased free time, but more hours spent on tasks that provide no value.

Charles Stross has indicated
that his post-human robot
novel Neptune's Brood was 
influenced by David Graeber's
Debt: The First 5,000 years.
(Image via Goodreads)

Much like workers experiencing “bullshit jobs,” robots in these post-apocalyptic stories are trapped by their place within a hierarchy of labour. Their programming, social conditioning, or deeply ingrained understanding of themselves compels them to continue performing tasks long after those tasks have ceased to matter. Uncharles, the valet robot protagonist of Tchaikovsky's Service Model, navigates an absurd bureaucracy that no longer serves any living citizen. The robots of Saturn’s Children inherit human conflicts and hierarchies despite the disappearance of the species that created them. It’s worth noting that this year’s Hugo-finalist novel by Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author, features a novel-within-a-novel called Rusted Robots which takes a particularly interesting angle on these themes. Rusted Robots seems to play with the way modern AI is undermining the meaningfulness of creative pursuits.

One counterpoint to these stories is Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot trilogy of novellas. The robots in these stories do not continue performing meaningless labour after humanity. Instead, when they achieve sentience, they simply stop. There is something somewhat radical in Chambers’ work because of protagonist Splendid Speckled Mosscap’s rejection of bullshit work. In fact, the refusal to define themselves through that work is what Chambers depicts as the great act of liberation.

There is a subtext in the post-apocalyptic robot novel that the worst parts of capitalism — alienation of the worker from their labour, power imbalances, hierarchy — will survive the extinction of humanity. The purpose may end, but the labour will carry on.