This book was recommended to me by hat. Klara and the Sun gets unexpectedly existential for how cute and simple of a little story it is. At its most simple, is the story of a robot named Klara and her love for the sun. Its themes feel especially pertinent given how quickly AI has seemingly taken over society over the last few years, and I could see the events of the novel playing out in real life in the near future. It's a little dystopian, but even Klara never gives up hope, so I think we shouldn't either!
Since the plot mostly revolves around learning more about the setting as time progresses chronologically, I don't want to spoil too much, but if the book sounds interesting already I highly recommend just reading it! It's pretty light and I finished it in less than a week, reading a section every day.
Soilers are marked like this, hover to reveal.
So, Klara the robot. She's specifically an AF, an “artificial friend” taking the form of a teenage girl, whose purpose is to keep her human companion entertained and loved. The story is told from her perspective and so the writing is a little stilted in the way that is typical of today's advanced LLMs, but this choice felt appropriate for conveying Klara's observations. Unlike other AFs, she's particularly empathetic and adept at observing the emotional states of others, and notes these observations rather plainly as she narrates. It gives the sense that these are truly things that only Klara would know, but at the same time Klara is not an entirely reliable narrator, and has some misunderstandings of how the world functions. It's a little unclear how distinct AFs are supposed to be from humans in this setting. Some characters note that Klara's cognitive abilities are quite advanced, but also acknowledge that she is lacking compared to newer models, though this seems to be mostly in regard to physical ability. Appearance wise, she is much closer to human than Roomba or Furby, but only the housekeeper ever outright describes Klara as creepy, though this character seems to have a distaste for AFs in general. Regardless, AFs in this setting are most definitely treated as “things” and not “people,” even if they are capable and expected to possess preferences and desires. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to learn about other AFs in this world to get a better sense of what makes Klara unique instead of just being told as much, or at least learn more about their prevalence in this society. I imagine that this sort of technlogy would not be limited to toys for children, but even housekeeping is still done by humans. Perhaps because it is implied that AFs have a lifespan of just a few years, just long enough for their human child to grow out of them, it wouldn't be cost effective to use them for a large section of the workforce as they'd have to be replaced and retrained more frequently than would be economically feasible. But even if this were the case, it would be irrelevant to the plot and it makes sense that it isn't explained or explored further.
I found Klara's obsession with the sun to be very apt. AFs are solar powered and need direct sunlight quite frequently or they cease to function properly until they are recharged. Living things of course also need sunlight to survive, but we can also recieve the sun's nourishment indirectly through eating, and too much sun can be harmful. AFs are nonliving but diefy the sun more than creatures that depend on it for survival, which is a concept of "life" that I don't think I've come across in other books before. In any case it's a clever idea to program AFs to have special appreciation for the sun, though it also suggests a limit to Klara's knowledge as she carries the belief that the sun is quite literally a God to be prayed to and not a bundle of gas floating in space with neither desire nor will, nor capacity to hear Klara and respond to her pleas. Advanced AI is usually, and boringly, depicted as all-knowing, calculating, unbiased and unfeeling, but I think most attempts to break this trope focus too much on AI discovering emotions for the first time, and asking what tears and love are. I think religion is more intrinsicly human, and maybe a more interesting question is not if AI can feel, but if it can believe.
There is one thing that I especially wish the book spent more time on, the effects of gene editing and how it relates to social hierarchy and metrics of success. In this society, "lifted" children are ones that have undergone some kind of procedure to make them "better" in some way. Josie, Klara's human, is one such lifted child, but she spends much of her childhood recovering from this procedure, far away from other children except for the rare occasions they come to her house to socialize. It's not entirely clear what improvements are made, other than that they're smarter and can go to college, unlike children that are not lifted. Josie's friend Rick is one such case, as his mother had some hesitations about it. None of the adults in the book are lifted because the procedure wasn't around when they were children (and it presumably can't be performed past a certain age). I think in real life there are some procedures and medications that some parents might elect to have their children put through, even if it could lead to complications, because they believe it will ensure a better future for them than if they had not. It's a trade-off that's difficult to weigh. [Big Spoiler]Josie ultimately decides she's happy that her mother chose for her to be lifted even if it nearly killed her (as it did her older sister), but it's not like she had a choice. If she had died instead, maybe she would not have been so satisfied with her mother's decision. Is a lonely bedridden childhood better than an a potentially bleak adulthood? And is the child ever the one really making the decision? I think these sorts of questions are kind of just tossed at the reader and end up unresolved, but they're more periphery to a more central theme of what constitues a “person”.
Anyway Klara and the Sun is really a worthwhile read for a good cry and some light existential dread. I highly recommend it, I think you will also wish you had your own Klara!