This is the second story I read by D.B. Story on the female ‘bot universe. In a near future nothing much has changed of today world if not the introduction of the ‘bots, the new trend for people with too much money and too little to do with them. As the author himself said, in the beginning sentences “We—meaning robots like myself who find our awareness in strip clubs—are often lesbians. This is attributable to the coercive control measures used on us during our performances to keep us legal in the eyes of the authorities and to maintain tight control over large numbers of us at once.” I found interesting these sentences, but I also think that these ‘bot universe is lesbian since these female ‘bot are strong women, and I find difficult that a man would accept such strong women as companionship. The other thing I like of these stories is that, even if they could easily lead to a D/s relationship, with the human owner using the ‘bot as nothing more than a gadget, that is not the case, on the contrary, the ‘bot is usually stronger than the human, and as such, she almost assumes the role of caretaker, arriving to “teach” to the human woman how to be a good owner. Humans indeed have the weaker role, and that is a slightly worrying point, because it implies that ‘bot are gaining momentum, they are becoming more and more independent, and being them also stronger and less incline to emotion, this could lead to a quite unsettling future.
But the author doesn’t arrive to such extremes, maintaining the story more on a personal level. He is more interested in writing about the awakening of consciousness in these female ‘bot, maybe with a parallelism on a different type of awakening; with the control of their mind and their mechanical body, the ‘bots gain also control over their sexual desires, and they are free not only to express them, but to reciprocate.
The men are not making a good impression in these stories, but truth be told I have read only two, so I cannot really have a strong opinion on this point; from what I read, it seems the female ‘bot can find truly happiness only with another woman, being her another ‘bot or a human. Better if the other woman is an human, since the female ‘bot have some “needs” that only another human can fulfil, making clear that, even if with a consciousness, they are, after all, robots.
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Amazon Kindle: Strip Club Tales: Diary of a Club Bot
Publisher: Excessica Publishing (January 20, 2011)
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