Welcome to my little part of the Quirk Books “blogsplosion”. Let me first direct you to the Quirk Books message boards where you can go, put in your name, the name of this blog and you are entered into the Quirk Classics giveaway. 25 individuals will win a Prize pack of books, posters, audio downloads, etc, etc. After you’re done reading, go there and good luck.
Andriod Karenina is book that at times seems to ask “what will it be like? ” when it is in fact asking “how might it have been?” This book reads at time like Alan Campbell or at other times like the best of speculative, historical, science-fiction. (whew!) Set in imperial Russia, Android maintains the romance and class struggles of the original while giving way to the subtext of post-industrialization’s effects on people’s personal, day-to-day lives. Anna and Vronsky have their affairs of the heart and Stiva and Dolly have at each from the opening chapter…..but in the hands of co-writer Ben Winters, in this world, all human actions seem to have parallel actions in the world of their servants/companions: the robots.
Written as a “steampunk” epic, Andoid Karenina does not cater to the lazy reader. The function of each robot is given in it’s name (“I/Samovar/1(8)”, for example), but much of the human/robot etiquette and scientific terminology is not readily explained and the reader must work through this based on context alone. For this and many other reasons, I would highly recommend Andriod Karenina to any fan of science fiction or 19th century romantic epics. But I would especially recommend it to anyone looking for a book that is truly imaginative and challenging.
simcoe/ART 
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