PRAISE FOR THE MACHINE DYNASTY SERIES

“VN is a clever book with a wonderful ending by a writer who is well versed in AI technology, who can evoke sympathy with a few well-turned phrases and tells a satisfyingly complex story.”

– Eric Brown, The Guardian

“Ashby intelligently and brutally explores the way people are willing to abuse, devalue and destroy any form of consciousness they’re able to define as ‘other’, while the robots challenge the limits of love, devotion and life after death.”

– Toronto Globe & Mail, on iD

“Picks up where Blade Runner left off and maps territories Ridley Scott barely even glimpsed. vN might just be the most piercing interrogation of humanoid AI since Asimov kicked it all off with the Three Laws.”

– Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy

“Will AIs be objects, or people? Caught between the category of human and everything else, we can’t think about the very real entities that inhabit — and will inhabit — the excluded middle. Madeline Ashby’s done more than just think about that territory; she’s made it her home. Person; object; we need new words for things that are neither — and in vN, Ashby provides them.”

– Karl Schroeder, author of the Virga series

“In Ashby’s expert hands vN cuts a painful incision into the emotional complexity of oppression in our society, and the way love can feed the worst kinds of hate. vN is a powerful novel and a fine exemplar of exactly the perspectives chauvinist SF so often stifles.”

– Damien G. Walter Women Authors in Hard SF, The Guardian

“vN is a strikingly fresh work of mind-expanding science fiction.”

– Charlie Jane Anders, IO9.com