First published in Uncanny Magazine and nominated for Best Short Story awards at both the Nebulas (2017) and Hugos (2018), Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s Fandom For Robots offers a warm, affectionate take on online fan communities and the value of fan fiction. As “the only known sentient robot”, Computron resides in the Simak Robotics Museum and takes the stage each day to answer audience questions and demonstrate his sentience. When an audience member suggests he might enjoy a Japanese anime series called Hyperdimension Warp Record (超次元 ワープ レコード) he finds himself drawn in by the show’s story, despite his inability to experience it emotionally. While waiting for new episodes, he discovers a fan-made wiki for the series, which sets him off on an unexpected path.
Told as much through message board transcripts as regular prose, it’s a short but delightful little story, full of dry humour in its pitch-perfect depiction of online fandom – the rivalries and objections, and the powerful opportunity that an anonymous message board offers for like-minded people to find shared enthusiasms. Computron’s earnest determination to accurately depict robotic life (robots should be entitled to representation, after all) leads to his first halting steps in writing his own fanfic, opening him up to a new world of collaboration that seems to give him a new purpose. He may not have the emotion circuits that would allow him to experience joy, excitement or anger, but writing fanfic and interacting with other fans certainly gives him an outlet that he hadn’t had before.
As he reflects on certain plot elements within Hyperdimension Warp Record, Computron also revisits some of his own lonely history, which provides a sense of sadness to counterbalance the humour. It’s all delivered with a deft, light touch that hints at greater depths, and if the open-ended nature of the story means that it leaves you desperate for more, that sense of inviting the reader to imagine what comes next feels entirely appropriate for the subject matter! All told, this is one of those short but sweet stories that’s wonderfully imaginative and a total joy to read.
Fandom For Robots was first published in Uncanny Magazine in 2017, but I read it as part of The Best of World SF Volume 1, edited by Lavie Tidhar and published by Head of Zeus 2021.
Many thanks to Head of Zeus for sending me a review copy of The Best of World SF Volume 1, in exchange for my honest reviews – keep an eye out for more short reviews of some of the other stories featured in this anthology.
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