Robotic but Passionate: "Android Karenina" by Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy

 When I was in high school I had a literature teacher who, whenever she did not feel like teaching, came into class pushing a squeaky video cart which makes every young student's heart beat faster with the prospect of watching movies instead of studying. One of those movies, I remember clearly, was Anna Karenina from 1997, the one with Sophie Marceau as Anna. During my lifetime I have watched this screen adaptation three times in total and read the book twice, and although it is one of the most boring books imaginable I remember it fondly. Imagine how bored I must have been in regular class that watching this rather tedious movie was one of the highlights of my school life.

Fast forward a few years later at university, I sit in my Introduction to Linguistics course and the professor mentioning that the Czech word “robota” and the German word “Arbeiter” (worker) are etymologically related, opens the doors of a whole new realization to me.

Fast forward a few years, I am reading Adam Roberts' wonderful non-fiction work Science Fiction where he elaborates that in the genre “Robots were often invoked as ciphers for oppressed workers, sometimes in complex ways.” and nod knowingly.

Against this backdrop, Ben H. Winters choosing the trope of robots and the robot uprising for his and Tolstoy's mash-up Android Karenina makes greatest sense to me.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of this parody series of mash-ups; classic novels are being taken (almost word by word) and peppered with fantastical elements like zombies or robots or Cthulhu inserted in especially emotional or intense moments of those classics and the resulting text is usually quite funny and quirky. Some other examples are Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I am aware this isn't necessarily super original or the best of literature, they're parody novels but I like to read them for fun.

Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way.

Android Karenina, in which an alternate 19th Century Russia is enriched with robots as companions to humans, time travel and space travel is possible and the fights are against space monsters and mechanical koshei, also centers around the same scandalous love story of married Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Anna) and the dashing cavalry officer Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky (Vronsky) gradually turn sour due to societal pressure on a married woman leaving her husband and even child.

The original work features embedded social commentary between passionate and defamatory love scenes: lots of old rich men chatting about the state of Russia, about the liberal reforms of Emperor Alexander II, principally railroads, industry, decline of aristocracy, judicial reforms etc. In Android these reforms are replaced by a robot uprising that turns the aristocracy's life upside down and make for a hilarious reading. In this new universe every aristocrat is paired with a robot servant which reflects the essential characteristics of their master, which made an interesting and compelling universe and reminded me of Philip Pullman's “His Dark Materials” universe where humans are paired with their soul animals. The servant robots perform all tasks and are bound by the Iron Laws of Robot Behavior, which are reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's and John Campbell's three laws of robotics. After the revolt, humans see themselves forced to create ultra-human cyborgs to fight back the robots.

My favorite part of Android Karenina is probably the presentation of Anna's lawful husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, who in the original work is a detached, unemotional, cold man. He was re-created as a villain with a metallic machine face, his robot side causing him to act and think logically and cold, while inside he is torn and fighting for his human side and his emotions, which was just sheer genius.

So, if you, like me, want to revisit an old classic, but perked up with a fresh take, you enjoy the robot trope and all it stands for in science fiction or you always wanted to read about Vronsky fighting space monsters, this will be your thing!