In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune
Review by Anar M., Youth Reviewer
T.J. Klune is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. I just finished reading “In the Lives of Puppets", a sort of post-apocalyptic book, set after the robots determined that the continued existence of humanity was detrimental to the continued existence of the planet. It’s a fascinating exploration of humanity, and memory, and personhood: the only human is Victor Lawson, and the four other characters are robots, but the emotional ties that connect the five of them are nevertheless interesting and powerful.
One thing I particularly like about Klune is the style of his writing. He’ll introduce an idea or phrase early on (the movie “Top Hat”, butterflies, Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, evolution, trees) and then refer back to it over the course of the book. The idea gains emotional context with every reference back to it, until I’m nearly in tears when a robot whose memory has been wiped notices a column of butterflies. If I had to find one reason why I loved this book, it’d be the emotional side of it.
The way that the robots become ‘sentient’ isn’t entirely clear. One talks about it as a sort of evolution — learning to think independently, perhaps, or growing a conscience. It makes me think of AI: if humanity creates robots that do truly have artificial intelligence, if they are capable of growing and learning as individuals, it follows that they are to some extent human. I’m not talking about the Chat-GPT kind of AI, which is really just a high-tech word predictor; it’s hard to argue that Chat-GPT is actually thinking, or aware. What I’m calling real AI is AI that’s thinking in a way that humans would recognize as thought, rather than just finding patterns in datasets. “In the Lives of Puppets” makes me wonder where the line is between that kind of AI, and a human being.
Questions about the nature of humanity aside, “In the Lives of Puppets” is definitely one of my top favourite books. Go read it!
Find “In the Lives Of Puppets” at the Kitchener Public Library!