An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner

Published by Tor.com on September 15, 2020

An Unnatural Life imagines that Jupiter’s moon Europa has been colonized. Its colonists dwell underground. Robots with Artificial Intelligence, called robotniks, do most of the grunt work for the colonists. A robotnik known as Worker Class 812-3 killed a human co-worker. Or maybe he didn’t. Responsibility for such things is difficult to judge in the case of robotniks who can be controlled by others. A jury of humans found 812-3 guilty. The robotnik doesn’t feel guilty and, depending on one’s view of the law, he might not be. On the other hand, the robotnik thinks he acted out of love, so 812-3 might not have a reliable perspective when it comes to the human world.

A lawyer named Aiya Ritsehrer is working with a program that hopes to rehabilitate robotniks. They are good laborers with strong backs when they aren’t killing people, but most humans are skeptical that killer robots can be rehabilitated. That isn’t surprising, since many humans are skeptical that humans can be rehabilitated.

Aiya decides that, in the absence of robotnik jurors, 812-3 wasn’t tried by a jury of his peers. The plot is driven by Aiya’s determination to appeal 812-3’s conviction and to obtain a new trial based on United Nations rulings that grants equal rights to AIs. Aiya encounters resistance from human colonists who almost universally agree that AIs can’t be trusted because they aren’t true humans. Much of the resistance comes from angry shouters who apparently still plague humanity in 2145.

Isaac Asimov wrote the first widely read stories about robots who yearn for human rights. He wisely put the focus on the robots and their struggle to be recognized as human. Stories about civil rights for robots tend to be allegories that channel the struggle to protect the civil rights of everyone who is treated as less than equal. They work when they make the reader see the robot as having the qualities of a human. Erin K. Wagner alters the traditional framework for stories of this nature by making the unfortunate decision to shift the emphasis away from 812-3 and to place it on Aiya.

The story’s focus is not on the legal issue, which is underdeveloped, or on 812-3, whose enigmatic personality isn’t explored in any depth. Rather, the focus is on the impact that Aiya’s battle for justice has on Aiya. Her friend/partner insists that she move out when a mob of angry shouters gathers in front of their home. Aiya worries that she won’t be protected by the police or prison guards who oppose giving human rights to robotniks. Aiya is a depressive, downbeat, surprisingly timid character who did little to win my sympathy despite her belief in justice. She doesn’t have the fire in her belly that draws lawyers to civil rights work. Instead, she seems to be a bit of a doormat who doesn’t have much desire to fight back against her oppressors and has to force herself to do the right thing for 812-3, a robotnik she instinctively fears.

The ending is downbeat. That may be a realistic commentary on the history of the civil rights struggle, but Aiya responds to it with her usual air of misery. Readers are apparently expected to be more indignant about the story’s events than Aiya ever becomes. Wagner tries to soften the bleak ending by having Aiya give freedom to a cleaning bot that likely lacks the processing power to appreciate it, but Aiya’s final attempt to make a statement seems contrived and a bit pointless.

I admire Wagner’s prose style. Perhaps a longer work that explored the underlying issues and 812-3 in greater depth, that wasn’t satisfied with depicting Aiya as a Debbie Downer, would have done justice to the story’s premise. As it stands, Wagner wrote a mildly interesting novella that adds little to a concept that other writers have exhaustively explored.

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