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I finished the novel Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, which I chose as the October pick for the horror book club that I lead. I was looking for something sci-fi horror. If you are a horror person, this isn’t a horror book. I think I misunderstood the synopsis mentions the ship’s name is Demeter, the ship from Dracula that travels from eastern Europe to England (watch my video if you want to see me have a veritable stroke over trying to remember where Dracula went). In Truelove’s novel, Demeter is an AI ship.
The story is all very futuristic, hundreds of years from now. There is also an AI medical system known as Steward. After two separate paranormal murders that occur on Demeter with no computer records of what happened, Demeter undergoes testing and has her systems rebooted and reprogrammed. Yet, she keeps getting recommissioned. And so on the back of the book, the synopsis mentions that Demeter joins forces with her own team of monsters to face down Dracula. The team includes a werewolf, “…an engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones.” And they’re going to take on Dracula. So, yes, I thought Of Monsters and Mainframes was horror. This is definitely not horror. If you were into that new sci-fi movie that just came out with Ryan Gosling and the little like spidery creature, Project Hail Mary, you’ll definitely enjoy Of Monsters and Mainframes because this book is full of fun personalities. I would say that’s the best part of the book.
Also, I really enjoyed the way in which Demeter grows to care about other beings, even though she is AI. It’s abnormal for AI to have feelings. Demeter is constantly sparring with a medical AI, Steward, who has her own little feisty personality. Steward’s whole programming is AI ship doctor, meaning Steward has files on how to interact with humans, which Demeter finds very confusing. One funny point about Steward is they are constantly remaking tea in case somebody comes in and is ill. Steward has a perfected ginger tea that has benzo in it. Her tea her tea set is constantly getting broken when Demeter makes rash decisions like decelerating in an unsafe fashion. Demeter and Steward read like spouses who have been married forever.
At one point Demeter is offline and Steward has to take over and drive the ship, which she is not programmed to do. The chapters change narrators to give different points of view, so in this case Steward thinks, “You know what? Being an autopilot isn’t all that hard. I don’t know why Demeter seemed so stressed all the time. It’s day 1 of our journey, and we haven’t crashed yet. Apart from the slight scrape when we took off. But that wasn’t my fault. The dock moved.” I can just hear echoes of my mom driving in lieu of my dad and hitting the curb! (sorry, Mom!). It’s very easy to love the characters.
In early chapters, Demeter has developed emotional code for humans. On the second voyage after her entire crew was killed (Dracula wasn’t caught on cameras, so Demeter is blamed), there’s a different monster onboard and only two passengers left alive: children named Agnus and Isaac. Demeter’s ship log goes on for several pages, which is clinical, but readers see the emotional implications of what the children are doing:
Day 1,211. Isaac tries to cut his own hair. The results are suboptimal.
Day 1,223. Agnus still has not done any homework. …
Day 1,512. Isaac starts teaching himself the trumpet. I don’t know where he found it.
Day 1,537. Agnus goes into the airlock. She stays there until Isaac finds her.
Day 1,566. Isaac finds the captain’s uniform. He refuses to take it off.
Perhaps you notice that part where Agnus goes into the airlock. Demeter doesn’t put this in her log. But the airlock is the space between the inside of the ship and space, suggesting Agnus is feeling suicidal because they’ve been on the ship for so long. Just these two children essentially being raised by a ship and an AI medical robot. What would a future look like with AI raising children? Are we already doing something similar by entertaining children with tablets? How about our current “loneliness epidemic”?
Truelove introduces more monster characters. They all have fantastic personalities. A futuristic Frankenstein. An ancient mummy adapted to more recent times. Numerous characters are non-binary or ambiguous or has they/them pronouns because a gender just hasn’t been decided.
As wacky and crazy as Of Monsters and Mainframes is, it’s highly readable. You just sort of kind of fall into one scenario after another and roll with it. It’s a lot of fun. The characters all sound different. One chapter, “A Brief Interlude by Agnus Theodoris Wagner,” reads thusly: “Fuck yeah, robot arm. Fuck yeah, I’m a cyborg. Fuck yeah, it ain’t dainty or pretty or human-looking. It’s a scary, big crab-claw thing that can unscrew bolts and crush stuff flat. Fuck yeah, this is awesome.” She does not talk like that the whole book. This is when she was a teenager. If you get tired of swear words, rest assured. But I do highly recommend this Of Monsters and Mainframes. I was surprised when I got to the very end and noticed the author is Australian. In recent years, she’s published more novels, but her origins are gaming and a choose-your-own-adventure book called Blood Moon, which can be purchased and read online. We looked at a sample during book club, and it was neat.
Quick last note: do not get the audiobook. There are chapters of binary code that are actually read by the audio narrator, and she uses a painfully annoying robot voice for all AI.
