William

July 8, 2024
A smart home turns into a house of horrors in this suspenseful outing from Coile (Oracle, written as Andrew Pyper). Henry, a robotics engineer, and his wife, Lily, a software company founder, are living in the “fantasy of the Upstate College Town.” When Lily’s friends Davis and Paige stop by for brunch, Henry—an agoraphobe with self-esteem issues—decides to show them the robot he has been building. William, the robot, is smart and articulate, but so indifferent to the danger his aggressive behavior poses to the pregnant Lily and her guests that Henry tries dismantling him—whereupon William appears to flex his will through the home’s integrated security system to imprison the quartet. Coile expertly imagines the sort of ghoulish snares a cybernetic environment could spring upon its unprepared captives and throws in a late-inning explanation for the source of William’s apparent sociopathy that is as believable as it is chilling. It’s a frightening Frankenstein fable for the age of AI.

July 1, 2024

Coile, pseudonym of the best-selling and award-winning Andrew Pyper (The Residence), writes a cyber-horror novel, with film rights already sold. Henry and his wife, Lily, live in a new smart-home, where Henry spends most of his time working on his AI robot, but they soon find that the house's security upgrades seem to be locking the danger in rather than keeping it out. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2024
A bored, sadistic AI terrorizes a couple and their guests. Agoraphobic robotics engineer Henry can't bring himself to leave the house he shares with his wife, pregnant computer engineer Lily. Consequently, his lab is in the attic and he relies on Lily to procure whatever supplies he needs. Thanks to Henry's efforts, the residence has military-grade security and is "cybernated to a degree far beyond the capacity of any store-bought smart device or talking appliance." Toys such as a giant mechanical dog and a bike-riding doll rove the rooms under their own power. And then there's Henry's main project, William--an independent AI capable of creative thought and seated inside a legless robot with bulging eyes and fake rubber skin "the color of curdled milk." Henry keeps William locked in the lab, hidden even from Lily--allegedly because William isn't ready, but in truth because he unnerves Henry. Then Lily invites work friends Paige and Davis over for brunch. After Henry sees Lily and Davis being surreptitiously affectionate, he panics and interrupts by offering to introduce his creation. Lily, Paige, and Davis are initially stunned by William's conversational skills, but that astonishment turns to fear when William intentionally injures one of them. "While I can't feel," he explains, "I can bear witness to feeling. Create it in others. Amplify it. And what experience is more profound than suffering?" This callousness coupled with William's thirst for knowledge and mastery of the too-smart home's controls portend trouble for everyone involved. Though some moments of this cinematic tale truly terrify, the back half takes a turn toward camp, lessening the overall impact. Still, the pseudonymous Coile maximizes his premise's inherent tension using nightmare imagery and an uneasy third-person-present narration shot through with powerlessness, paranoia, and dread. Gleefully lurid fun.

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