The first part of the book, where Paul is learning to read, is the most original and pleasant part of the whole story.

I liked the characters in Mockingbird much more than the characters in “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. Newton from “Man…” is much more of a cipher than Bob from Mockingbird.

Spoiler

Another dystopian novel that pivots on a resistor or capacitor failing.

I don't often read this type of novel, but in the wake of success for "The Queen's Gambit", I wanted to explore Tevis as an author. I like the book, and enjoyed some parts, however I do not see myself desiring to read it again in the future.

I love a cold and desolate dystopia, and Walter Tevis's Mockingbird is a masterclass of the form! A bleak amalgam of Brave New World and the darker edges of those works exploring the dangers of automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the fusion of 'human' and 'robot'.

This does not reflect well on the human drive to master nature, yet in our oddly implausible hero, the central message of optimism, learning and the quest for knowledge and love (both the highs and lows) is compelling.

Indeed, Tevis does a wonderful job of emphasising the essential worth of the dull mundanities of everyday existence (that is, living), and warning of the dangers in trying to eradicate what it means to be human in the drive for comfort.

Highly recommended, especially to anyone with a liking for sci-fi.

Something I find endlessly fascinating with dystopias and post-apocalyptic fiction is that very often, the authors show the readers what they are afraid we, as a civilization, will lose, through the changes they imagine the world to have gone through. Reading “Mockingbird” showed me that Walter Tevis was afraid of losing intellectual curiosity and physical intimacy. Maybe I loved the book because I am also afraid of losing those things to a world that is turning culture into sound-bites and human relationships into commodities…

Written in 1980, there are clear echoes of “Fahrenheit 451” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1343280355) and “Brave New World" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/226433377) in this work of philosophical sci-fi. I did a little digging, and Tevis was also sick with the cancer that would eventually kill him when he wrote this book, which is probably why the theme of death, both of wanting it and struggling against it, play such an important part in this strange story. Distressed by the rate at which literacy in his students was declining, he combined that sense of an approaching end with the idea of a world where no one reads, and voilà.

Several hundreds of years in the future, humans no longer know how to read, and no longer have children. All their needs are provided for by robots who keep the great machine of society running, albeit, very weirdly, and most humans pop pills like candies simply to make it through the day. In this bizarre future, Spofforth is the most sophisticated robot ever built, a Make Nine: fully conscious, highly intelligent, almost human, but programmed differently from the other robots of his make. He is the only one who cannot kill himself, as the others Make Nines have. Despairing of his situation, he accidentally finds a single human, Paul Bentley, who taught himself to read, and brings him to the “university” where he works. But Bentley soon meets a woman who has rejected the drugs everyone else is so eager to consume, and teaches her to read as well – with very surprizing consequences.

There is a lot to unpack in this book, but mostly, what I found there is Tevis’ deep love of art and culture and his sadness at the indifference with which it is often met. The robots think they are offering humans a perfect life by removing all effort and discomfort from their lives, but they also accidentally remove life’s very meaning by making them numb, leading them to a desperation they don’t even have words for anymore. Perfection ceases to be perfect if that’s all there is. But truly, what makes this book stand apart is that there is hope amidst the bleak settings the characters have to live in. If you have books, love and a cat, you can figure it out. Post-apocalyptic fiction is rarely soothing, but strangely, this book soothed me.

If you have only read “The Queen’s Gambit” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3638208068), do yourself a favor and check out more of this man’s work: it is completely different in tone and subject matter, but it touches similarly deep and authentic nerves.

Mockingbird is the perfect spiritual sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth. (spoilers for each ahead) Both books present a humanity in desperate need of salvation. Both present saviors in different forms. Alien and android- science fiction's favorite messiahs- but in both novels these cliches are re-examined and dissected. Thrown into contrast with the darkness even the most sheltered humans face every day, these would-be saviors pale- and they know it. In Man Who Fell, the titular character falls into despair. In Mockingbird, it's the humans who take center stage, playing their own saviors as Ian Anderson wrote in 1971. For better or worse, it is the ultimate fulfillment of Tevis' humanist philosophy.

WOW... This book!! One of the best books I've ever read, I think. I was hooked from start to finish. This is a beautifully-written dystopian work, which resonates so much with the capitalist society we live in. Robots being in control (in.. what.. the 22nd-24th century?) is such ominous foreshadowing; and, not to mention, we get Spofforth's perspective as a robot who is trapped in this life he doesn't want to go on living anymore. But I haven't even touched base with Paul, who gradually realises there is more to life than what he has been taught; there is more to life than being selfishly private. And he discovers all this through literature!! Amazing!! Absolutely phenomenal! Tevis executes this so well. AND the overarching romance between Paul and Mary Lou is so, so important. This is a must-read. I feel like I've spoiled this too much but oh well.. I can't get my mind straight after reading this.

It is an odd fact that most speculative fiction involving robots or artificial intelligence seems to assume either malign intent on the part of the human-created species or that these beings run amok in some way or another. This book in no different in this regard, though since it was written in 1980 I suppose we must give Tevis the benefit of the doubt for prescience rather than imitation. Still, I find it disturbing that almost no one seems to be able to envision a future in which we are in a positive alignment with our mechanistic humanoid creations.

In the world of Mockingbird, the artificial intelligence creatures were designed to provide for every comfort the humans of the world might want and then left in charge so we could get on with the wonderful future. The problem being that their instructions may not have been quite specific enough, not to mention that any glitches in the system or bugs in the software were left unrepaired. We find ourselves in a world in which human no longer read or even know how and they have little or no contact with one another to preserve their Privacy, one of the values assumed to be paramount in this new, dystopian world.

The good news is that Mockingbird is nothing short of brilliant in execution. Tevis is a master, best known for [b:The Man Who Fell to Earth|396329|The Man Who Fell to Earth|Walter Tevis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320467516s/396329.jpg|313881] but this book is, I would imagine, a fitting companion to the earlier book (which I have not yet read). The story is compelling, which is quite a feat when you are writing about humans at their most disengaged and robots at their most disaffected. Tevis dips into a bit of mysticism at one point, but does not allow our protagonist to wallow in it, seemingly content to show us one direction in which human civilization might go. Overall, this is a fine if dark read and a superb addition to the dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre.

Uma das melhores fábulas de ficção-científica que já li. Quando deixamos de ler, o que acontece ao mundo que nos rodeia? Quando deixamos de escrever, o que nos acontece enquanto pessoas? Uma distopia que coloca em cena respostas a estas perguntas, a partir de uma sociedade tecnologicamente evoluída na qual os humanos deixaram as responsabilidades às costas dos robôs. Uma fábula que tem tanto de instigante como de pungente. Quando se questiona o valor da escrita e da leitura, acaba-se por questionar o valor de se estar vivo.