Makram Halabi February 4, 2013
Science Fiction Workshop

Craft Response: Eros, Philia, Agape

“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky This was a pretty interesting read because at some points I almost forgot that this was a science fiction story, until something new was introduced, such as “healing robots” or towards the end when Adriana is carrying Rose into the house and the house takes a DNA strand from her hair to verify and then she screams “close” to lock down the house. This read was not overwhelming with science fiction but there was always a constant reminder that this doesn’t take place in the near future. I find it kind of incredible but disturbing at the same time about how Adriana was able to build her own “person” and try to shape him an mold him into the parts of her life that is missing. In my opinion, Adriana was a little too hung up on everything. Also, she didn’t really know where to turn her love and attention to. She was so busy dreaming about how to fill the voids in her life so perfectly, that in the end, she drove away what she loved the most. Adriana was so caught up with her own self pity that she loses th love of her adopted child and her child begins to think that it is a robot, just like Lucian.
This “robot” was lacking the characteristics of most robots that you read about, where as this was a robot trying to find “itself” and leaves a family and a little girl that he absolutely loves, in order to find “itself”. The thought of a robot acting and thinking for itself, enjoying roses as humans do, is unheard of for me, except when watching iRobot and Sunny has dreams...Do you think they’re related? Lol, sorry. But here, the machine was treated like an equal and it learned to