THE HIERARCHIES

In this novel set in an indeterminate future and country, male libidos are mostly slaked by sex dolls, and procreation has been definitively severed from sex.

Into this milieu steps “humanoid pleasure doll” Sylv.ie (“i.e.” refers to her category, an “Intelligent Embodied”). Unboxed at a gated suburban home, Sylv.ie is fully programmed to fulfill her Husband’s every fantasy and to obey the Hierarchies, rules which echo Asimov’s laws of robotics. Sylv.ie’s Absorb Mode function allows her to continuously learn from the Ether (i.e., the internet), ostensibly to “remain interesting…for my Husband.” She quickly grasps her societal role—in this future, sexuality has been “outsourced.” The novel pays scant attention to human women or gay men. Cloistered in her attic room, Sylv.ie overhears arguments denoting that the household’s human wife, known as the “First Lady,” is not on board with the role division. After Sylv.ie violates protocol to check on the household's new baby (gestated, as are all humans in this era, in a lab), she is sent for rehabilitation at the Doll Hospital. There, she endures the indignities to which Doll inmates are subject, including spending days headless and being casually raped by the help. Ultimately, Sylv.ie’s transgressions lead her to a brothel, where she finds a friend, Cook.ie, a custom-designed geisha. Sylv.ie. and Cook.ie plot to take refuge in the Forest, that uncharted free territory that exists in so many dystopian novels. Writing the story entirely from Sylv.ie’s first-person point of view is a risky choice, resulting in a protagonist who never seems fully identifiable. Sylv.ie disassociates from her inner and outer conflicts, as do we. The prime directive against harming humans is a rule made to be broken, but not here. Despite the tension between Sylv.ie’s increasing enlightenment and her prescribed passivity, no dramatic confrontations erupt.

Echoes of Brave New World, I, Robot, and other books, but there's little to distinguish this debut from its antecedents.