Interview with MADELINE ASHBY

Today I talk to debut novelist Madeline Ashby about robots, Japanese anime, cyborg theory, writing and the distant dream of sleep…

Artwork: “vN” by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot)

Robots from Angry Robot! Below is the stunning artwork that will grace Madeline Ashby’s debut novel, the mysteriously-titled vN:

The artist is Martin Bland. Here’s the synopsis for the novel, which will be published in August 2012:

Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot.

For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, little Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.

Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she’s learning impossible things about her clade’s history – like the fact that the failsafe that stops all robots from harming humans has failed… Which means that everyone wants a piece of her, some to use her as a weapon, others to destroy her.

This is perhaps one of my favourite covers this year, and only heightens my already-considerable interest in the novel.