There are a million stories about robots with feelings, from HAL 9000 to Wall-E. At this point, it’s rare to even see a robot without feelings. While Klara and The Sun features your friendly neighborhood emotive machine, its concerns lie elsewhere; its society revolves around a more distant, more fundamental center. The main question being posed in book is not “What does it mean for a robot, or anything, to be ‘alive’?” Nobody in-universe cares about this, not even the robots themselves. Instead, it asks the more specific, anthropocentric question: "What is it about humans that requires a robot companion?" It considers potential answers through many characters and vantage points, shifting and changing as they comes in, do their thing, and eventually drift away.

The story is told entirely through Klara, who is a robot companion (“AF”) for children. She is intelligent, she is sensitive, and, of course, has feelings. In spite of her many advanced capabilities, however, she has some striking limitations, which play a larger role here than in any other robot story I can think of. In particular, she has an incongruously childlike awareness of peoples’ motivations. This is an interesting authorial decision, and is wielded skillfully. Klara can effortlessly analyze, say, the vocal tone and content of an utterance, but seems to be completely unable to detect any element of deceit. Considering such a choice in-universe, this seems intentional on the part of whoever designed the robot––a variant on Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, perhaps––as neither Klara nor the other AFs seem capable of harming humans intentionally. I suppose a suspicious or duplicitous robot wouldn't be very popular either.

Nevertheless, there are a few key moments where Klara breaks this "babe in the woods" aura by exercising her seemingly independent willpower. This is jarring, making you realize that Klara is not an actual child in spite of her many childlike qualities, and differentiate Klara and the Sun from your typical "naive protagonist" narrative. Moreover, the human characters are unlikeable, but that seems to be the point. They act more cold and robotic to each other than actual robots, and make the reader repeatedly ask "Are these people even worth saving?" both to themselves and implicitly to Klara. If your answer to this latter question is "No"––a conclusion that you can reach pretty quickly, if you're not careful––I think you'd have a pretty hard time getting through the story; it'd be like being forced to watch your childhood friend interact with their abusive spouse, who they just won't leave in spite of your protests. If you get into that headspace, maybe you'd feel better reading a police blotter.

Another interesting thing I noticed here is a sort of displacement phenomenon, a “conservation law” for emotion or attention that this work highlighted for me. Klara does not get angry, so we get angry for her. Nobody cares for Klara, so we care for Klara. Klara is loyal to everyone, but nobody returns her loyalty, and so we remain loyal to her. I can see how it might be possible for us to lose such feelings toward Klara––if she were to get mad, to lie, to cheat, to brag, or behave in some other way we disapprove of––but she behaves perfectly, down to her inner thoughts, and so our heart remains with her until the very end. That feeling has to go somewhere, and even when the emotion changes, its intensity can't be dissipated quickly; it has to go up or down slowly, like temperature, passing through each intermediate level. Very interesting, and I’m surprised that this kind of thing is not something I’ve noticed before. People––myself included––seem to have unusually strong reactions to this novel, and I can't help but feel that not having a well-defined outlet for such feelings or a familiar way to dial them down is part of the cause. "It's this book that's problem!" not the uncomfortable emotions that have been bubbling over 300 pages with nowhere to go.

My favorite moments of the novel, however, turned out to be the visual descriptions. These weren't anything I noticed in previous Ishiguro books, but the surreality of seeing the world through a robot with limited visual processing ability was portrayed here masterfully. The “boxes” that Ishiguro uses to describe Klara’s POV at certain points was especially cool, and unraveling when and why they appear was an unexpectedly affecting puzzle. The ambiguity present with such inputs enabled several storytelling devices, and I'm looking very much forward to see how these are portrayed in film.

Apparently, Ishiguro originally thought that Klara and The Sun was going to be a children’s book, before he asked his (adult) daughter––an author herself––to read an early version; she told him that it would be a terrible story for children. (I’d have to agree.) While the story I read is fully “grown,” you can still see some of the vestiges from that original format: childlike protagonist, strong visuals (for illustration), familiar character roles, clear and simple plot. If you require some complexity and interiority in your stories, you may have a bad time with what's on the page, but I think if you allow yourself to back up and ask questions about why the events are unfolding as they are, you can see the rest of the iceberg and avoid crashing into its sides.

The post-apocalyptic world of Klara and the Sun is eerily close at hand. While robotic companions on the level of Klara and other AFs do not yet exist, I don't think anybody would be surprised to hear an announcement about them in the near future. The existence of such machines––and inevitable popularization, in my view––will bring up a number of uncomfortable questions that we as a society will be forced to answer. While Klara and the Sun is no manifesto, I think it expresses and explores a collective uneasiness with such potential realities. Your answers may not be found within the text, but some questions are best explored with some emotional distance, some proxy for the hot-button issues that we're all avoiding a frank discussion about. Why do humans need a robot companion? Because the world in abstract can be scary and chaotic, with possibilities branching into countless infinities in your mind, and at such times it is helpful to grab onto something concrete, to have and to hold.