Celia Krajewski has a fatal genetic condition. Since it’s unique to her it will take some ten years before a cure is possible. Unfortunately, by that point she will have suffered irreparable brain damage. Happily, in the USA of the late twenty-first century, it’s possible to put Celia’s body into stasis until the cure is ready. And so that she does not miss out on her life during that period, her mind can be uploaded into a bioandroid body which mimics her appearance in all particulars.

This decision has unintended consequences: Celia’s wife leaves her, convinced that the bioandroid Celia is not the real Celia. There is a great deal of popular support for this position – so much so, in fact, that those in the bioandroid programme must keep their participation secret or they might be subjected to violence.

It comes as little surprise, then, that Celia begins to doubt her own humanity. She cuts herself, but beneath the skin is some sort of ceramic surface. Unwilling to accept that her identity is unchanged, Celia feels a need to explore her machine self. She visits online clubs where “bot freaks” hang out, and through one meets the Mechanic, a hacker who can give her what she wants. Through him, she meets a group of “mechanicals” who have altered their bioandroid bodies such they they no longer resemble or work like their biological originals. One in particular, called 1101, especially attracts Celia. 1101 has changed its bioandroid body to resemble an artist’s dummy. It recognises no gender, nor its previous humanity. Another, Gyne, has a body that can morph between male and female.

It is the fetishistic side of Celia’s situation which occupies much of the story of Machine. At one point, for example, she accompanies two of the mechanicals as they act as “love doll” prostitutes; and later plays the part of a love doll herself. Machine is at its best when it’s exploring this response to Celia’s machine identity. The exposition explaining the origin of the bioandroid programme is inelegant and unnecessary; and the popular reaction to bioandroids is clearly based on the US’s anti-abortion movement, but still feels a little too arbitrary to convince. In fact, the world-building throughout mostly feels a little too light to really convince. But these are minor quibbles.

There’s a disturbing prurience to the mechanicals and the changes they’ve made of, and the uses to which they put, their new bodies. Rather than explore how her new body makes her stronger, hardier, or no longer requiring food or oxygen, Celia chooses not to make herself more than human, but instead less than human. That she does so by changing her appearance to look less human, and through participation in the sex trade, seems only fitting. In Machine, Pelland has chosen an odd way to explore her theme, and though it’s skillfully done, it’s not an approach that will appeal to everyone.

Machine, Jennifer Pelland (2012, Apex Publications, $14.95, 978-1937009137)

This review originally appeared in Vector 271, Winter 2012.