Silver Metal Lover - Softcover

Lee, Tanith

4.03

3,968 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0879977213 ISBN 13: 9780879977214

Publisher: DAW, 1982

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Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood....

Tanith Lee is one of the most thought-provoking and imaginative authors of our time. In this unforgettably poignant novel, Lee has created a classic tale--a beautiful, tragic, erotic, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future.

For sixteen-year-old Jane, life is a mystery she despairs of ever mastering. She and her friends are the idle, pampered children of the privileged class, living in luxury on an Earth remade by natural disaster. Until Jane's life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a robot minstrel with auburn hair and silver skin, whose songs ignite in her a desperate and inexplicable passion.

Jane is certain that Silver is more than just a machine built to please. And she will give up everything to prove it. So she escapes into the city's violent, decaying slums to embrace a love bordering on madness. Or is it something more? Has Jane glimpsed in Silver something no one else has dared to see--not even the robot or his creators? A love so perfect it must be destroyed, for no human could ever compete?

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Review:

The Silver Metal Lover is a classic tale of transforming love. It's a keeper, a book that gets reread 'til it falls apart. Fans petitioned to get it reprinted, and after 10 years of waiting, here it is. Oddly, the book is seldom mentioned when Tanith Lee's work is discussed, perhaps because Lee's usual milieu is horror, and The Silver Metal Lover is a poignant romance requiring at least two hankies before the end.

Robots have replaced human labor on earth, causing massive unemployment in a world devastated by pollution and natural disasters. Then Electronic Metals releases a new line: performing artists and sexual companions designed to entertain human partners. Jane, a rich, lonely, and insecure 16-year-old, meets one, the minstrel Silver, and falls passionately in love, despite revulsion at the idea of preferring a mechanical man to a human. She gives up everything she has known for him, and discovers herself. Silver becomes more and more "human" in loving her--a clever illusion created by his programming. Or is it? This unstable society can't afford any evidence that some robots might be indistinguishable from humans. Tragedy is inevitable. Read it and weep--and don't forget to put it on the keeper shelf. --Nona Vero

From the Back Cover:

Praise for The Silver Metal Lover:

"Deftly written, moving, funny, totally convincing...this is quite simply the best sci-fi romance I've read in ages."
--Daily News, New York

"Tanith Lee has another winner in The Silver Metal Lover. It's an aluminum souffl� that's both amusing and touching."
--Asimov's Science Fiction

"The strengths of [The Silver Metal Lover] lie in the vivid vision of [Lee's] world--exotic and a little frightening, but quite believable....One of Lee's most fully realized creations."
--Publishers Weekly

"Lee continues to distinguish herself with her ability to bring flesh and blood to the worlds of the future. For those who like emotion and feeling in their SF, The Silver Metal Lover is highly recommended."
--Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review

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