The Actuality brings the favoured genre explorations of AI into our age. It questions what humanity is, with a frightening dose of climate impact.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Asimov’s Robot series may be the well cited foundations of AI sentience; however I’m doing no favours to the author or the book comparing The Actuality to golden age stories. This is the future, after all.
The Blurb:
Fear makes her human – humans make her fear.
Evie is a near-perfect bioengineered human. In a broken-down future England where her kind has been outlawed, her ‘husband’ Matthew keeps her safe but hidden. When her existence is revealed, she must take her chances on the dark and hostile streets where more than one predator is on the hunt.
The Actuality is told from a heartfelt viewpoint of Evie. Evie is the best money can buy. Or was forty years ago. In this future, climate changes have taken a devastating toll on England, and on the world’s ability to maintain energy hungry devices.
Evie’s normality, one of smoking jackets and grandfather clocks, comes to a violent end when thieves break into the penthouse to steal her. But it is not purely the AI’s complex reaction to the real world her owners have protected her from, (England running on dollars? Flooded Thames? Digital Big Ben? Two Eiffel Towers?) that makes this book sizzle. Gothic cyberpunk elements flicker through the pages to add to the quality of Braddon’s intelligent writing.
Without causing panic in Dewey systems, or horror to those who shelve their books alphabetically, The Actuality would sit nicely with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War and Robert Cargill’s Day Zero. Granted, Evie is a bio-engineered human, not a four-legged programmed protector. The Actuality, like these comparisons, represents conflict and turmoil in a spirit trying to find their place. Evie questions her place and understanding of a human world that does not match her human owner’s reality.
In a plausible ‘us and them’ world, the rich can maintain a life we can identify with, penthouses and gardens, heating, food. And for the ultimate elite, Evie, the exquisite android who hasn’t aged in 40 years. The law keeps the riffraff from their extravagant high-rise halls. Evie has only ever known luxury and the needs of her owner husband. She exists in blissful ignorance of the fact that her bio-engineered form is now illegal. The world in which The Actuality is set is dire, but intense. It leaves you wanting to know more.
Evie is well developed, easy to identify with, and beautifully written. As a treasured marvel, Evie captures the magic of nature she has not witnessed. These idyllic moments contrast the savagery on the streets, and the gruesome trials she endures. 
There are ‘hand-over-eyes’ moments. Braddon drip feeds warnings, in a ‘will they won’t they’ game with his reader, having made me care for Evie far too much. Importantly, Evie would not develop or question her place without such scenes.
The tone of the novel shifts, as she does, from home to Europe. Braddon takes the reader gently from a narrative with no intrusive tech to places where the science is key. Evie meets other AI, including David, a rare being like herself. Like the most enjoyable Science Fiction, I was given the space to muse over eventualities and possibilities and choices that may have ended differently.
The Actuality is published by Sandstone Press, who are building an impressive reputation of – let’s call it, approachable Science Fiction. Genre regulars and those who have yet to dream of electric sheep should check out The Actuality.
Highly Recommended.
Published by Sandstone Press
ISBN: 9781913207168
Available as: Paperback , Hardback, Ebook, Audiobook.
Review copy courtesy of the publisher.
© 2022 Shellie Horst
