She believes the machine will sever her connection to her child. Scarlett, a tech worker and the older of the two, is afraid of being replaced by a Stepford wife, the iMom. Consider the two women’s differing opinions on two new forms of technology: the robot in its incarnation as a sex toy and the iMom, an automated machine that performs childcare. However, this exchange also has its limits. The shape of The Love Makers is inventive, with thought and reflection contained within the speech of characters and commentators in the style of classical philosophical exchanges made anew. This narrative structure of exegesis and interpretation extends to the essays as well, since all of them are commentaries on varied themes and problematics within the novel-automation, attachment, the ethics of care, use of artificial intelligence, bias, even policy. Playing off each other, both characters present perspectives that are partially concealed, the form unfolding through artifice and memory, lies and hypotheses, opinions and judgements. While Gurl spins narratives, Scarlett hides, concealing the material truths of her life within fragments from philosophy and literature she offers her opinions on Gurl’s theories of attachment and love and slips into memories.
The novel is dialogue heavy, freewheeling between the uninhibited stories Gurl shares and Scarlett’s conversation prompts. Some commentaries are provocative, such as Kate Devlin’s “while (alive) ,” while others, such as Margaret Rhee’s poem “Sweet, Robot”, are fascinating in its tenderness. These cross-disciplinary essays are thought-provoking considerations of human-machine interaction: its potentials, its limitations, and its pitfalls. The novel, as well as the twelve short contributor essays that follow it, are presented as an exploration of gender, attachment, and the transformations of technology. They drive through an unnamed country, a landscape ruined by secure and secretive tech-laboratories and offices they talk to each other about their love affairs and sex, childbirth and care, and the effects of new automated technologies on their lives. Over the span of a day, on a road trip in the near future, the reader meets two archetypes: a bourgeoise woman named “Scarlett” and a poor woman who calls herself “Gurl,” honouring herself with the universality of gender. The Love Makersbegins with a two-hundred-page novel by Aifric Campbell, Scarlett and the Gurl.
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