Brian Aldiss’s “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” is a short story that depicts how Monica is alone, David isn’t real, and Henry just feeds into Monica’s loneliness “An overcrowded world is an ideal place in which to be lonely.”(Aldiss 112) David’s sole purpose is to fill a void with Mrs. Swinton, but it is hard to see a child who you want to love but can’t in the same sense as your own flesh and blood. David tries to express to his mother how he feels but simply cannot. Why can she not communicate with her son? Why must they use a robotic teddy bear to have communicated? Ultimately futuristic technology is used to provide companionship while waiting for your chance at parenthood.
The Swinton’s are what one would consider the perfect family, living in the perfect house, having a perfect child, the perfect husband with a perfect job, and a perfect wife who has a perpetually perfect garden. As the outside world is looking in on this family, perfect is what they see. Mr. Swinton has the ideal job where he is never alone, while Monica is at home trying to love a robotic boy “She had tried to love him”(112) is describing how Monica feels about David. How can a mother say that she had tried to love him? To have a mother say she tried to love him makes you question how perfect this family really is. Monica is longing for more than just David. She seems to try to want to love him but simply cannot in the same sense as the love for her own child. David wants to tell Monica how he feels “‘Darling Mummy, guess how much I love—‘ “(117) David cannot complete his sentences he writes on papers, he simply doesn’t think that they are good enough. He asks teddy for help but the only advice teddy can give David is to write what he want to say in crayon.
According to Robert M. Geraci “Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction:
Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence” “In science-fiction literature and film, human beings simultaneously feel fear and allure in the presence of intelligent machines”(Geraci 961) we can assume that Monica is afraid of David being that he is not a real boy but in fact an artificial human. This could be the cause of why there are communication barriers between the two of them. David being that he doesn’t understand “what ‘real’ really means” (Aldiss 118).
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Monica is the ideal wife who is longing for her own child and seeing David makes her think about not being able to conceive a child of her own. She blocks out her loneliness through her “beautiful thoughts” (113) but in turn Henry just adds to her loneliness by creating this super-toy, David, ”Creating People for Popular Consumption”(Mcconnell 683) to fill the void until their number gets drawn in the population lottery.
Works Cited
- Aldiss, Brian. “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.” Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen. Ed. Stephanie Harrison. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005. 112-18. Print.
- Geraci, Robert M. “Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 42.4 (2007): 961-80. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2014
- McConnell, Kathleen. “Creating People for Popular Consumption: Echoes of Pygmalion and “The Rape of the Lock” in Artificial Intelligence: AI.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.4 (2007): 683-99. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2014
