Harare Review of Books

52 pp. April 1, 2025, L’il Factory. Short sci-fi.

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I like robots and artificial life and sentient ships and reading from their POV and pondering their interiority, so I was already primed to like Burns, a droid who is sent to wander through the universe in search of life. Things aren’t going well for Burns: time is meaningless after an indeterminate amount of it, and it’s lonely out there (especially after Burns’s “dog” “dies”). But it turns out there’s another person to talk to—kind of—and that passes the time until Burns finds something marvellous and spectacular out there, just as all of its systems begin to fail because that’s kind of Murphy’s Law, but at least it happens.

It’s an oddly touching and moving little story (at 52 pages) and soooo satisfying for space and sci-fi nerds. I’m so glad I read it.

Thanks to L’il Factory and NetGalley for a DRC.