Richard Blair didn’t have the easiest start in life. At three weeks old, he was adopted. Nine months later, his adoptive mother, Eileen, died at 39, after an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic she was given for a hysterectomy. Family and friends expected Blair’s father, Eric, to un-adopt him. Fortunately, Eric, better known as George Orwell, was an unusually hands-on dad for the 1940s.
Orwell and Eileen had wanted children for years, but he was sterile and it is likely that she was infertile as a result of uterine cancer. Having finally agreed to adopt after their struggle, Orwell was not going to give up on his son. “The thing he wanted most in life was to have children,” says Blair. “And now I was his family.”
When Vi Liu finds a strange blob outside a college town dive bar, she’s not sure what to make of it. Eventually, and with a little help from Vi herself, the blob will morph into something beyond her wildest imagination.
“I was thinking about relationships and how mysterious they are and how difficult it is to find someone to connect with,” says author Maggie Su on the concept behind her debut novel, “Blob: A Love Story.” The initial idea, she adds, was, “What if we gave this character exactly what she thinks she wants, which is this blank slate, and what could possibly go wrong with that?”
In this sharp, sophisticated novel of forecasts and insightful takes, what I found most powerful was the great bewilderment that the characters share. Lalami traces the upheaval of AI through systems and structures into personal lives, close relationships and quiet thoughts. Sara privately questions whether she has a hidden potential for violence. An interlude at the centre of the novel follows a tech executive who is straining to make sense of her vast yet miserable power.