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The Silver Metal Lover

By Less Lee Moore

Robots have frequently played pivotal roles in science fiction. In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the False Maria robot is created to destroy. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner features several replicants, or biorobotic androids, created as human soldiers and slaves. There is Pris, the “basic pleasure model” and Zhora, an assassin. Both have a predetermined lifecycle of about three years. When the end approaches, both Pris and Zhora turn deadly. There is also Rachael, an even more advanced replicant, who does not even realize she is a replicant.

And then there is Tanith Lee’s 1981 novel, The Silver Metal Lover, which intriguingly combines elements of Metropolis, Blade Runner, and even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to weave a spellbinding tale of the other part of the story: What happens when someone falls in love with a robot?

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