Title: The Mad Scientist’s Daughter

Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke

Date of First Publication: January 29, 2013

Place of First Publication: Angry Robot: New York, NY

Bibliographic Reference: isfdb

Type: Novel

Character: No Character

Themes: ANDROID; FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS

Critical Summary: Cat Novak is still a young girl when her father, a cyberneticist, brings home a live-in tutor for her—a mysterious man named Finn. As Cat observes Finn, she realizes that he isn’t quite human and soon discovers that Finn is a lifelike and complex android. As Cat grows up, her relationship with Finn becomes more complicated, and after she kisses Finn one night, her parents decide to send her to a public high school.

Cat doesn’t ever really fit in at high school or college and whenever she’s in trouble she calls on Finn for help. Because her father connected Finn’s internal components directly to their house’s internet system, Cat realizes she can send him messages privately through her phone. She uses this method to maintain contact with Finn into her adult life. One day Cat learns that her mother has died, and she drives home to be with her father. At her childhood home, she seeks comfort from Finn, and sleeps with him for the first time. Cat realizes that Finn, being a robot, can never feel love for her, but they maintain a sexual relationship.

As a young adult, Cat begins a relationship with a man named Richard, a self-starter who works in cybernetics and who disregards the ethical dilemma of robot rights in favor of the status his job gives him. They marry, but Cat ultimately ends up divorcing him when he strikes her in anger after discovering she has been donating to a cause that supports robot rights—a group that goes completely against Richard’s business interests.

Before Cat moves out of Richard’s house, Finn drops by to tell her that, because of new legislation that allows robots to make decisions for themselves, Finn has signed up to be part of a mission to the moon that Cat’s father was working on in secret. A devastated Cat then learns that she is pregnant with Richard’s child and returns to her father’s home. When she asks her father for the truth about Finn, he admits that he took Finn from the possession of a female cyberneticist, Dr. Condon, who made Finn in the likeness of her deceased son. He also mentions that as an experiment, he installed a program in Finn that allowed him to feel emotion, and Cat realizes that she had been using Finn selfishly and that there was a chance he loved her back.
​When Cat’s father falls ill, he begs Cat to summon Finn. She contacts the people in charge of the moon operation and asks them to relay the message to Finn. He eventually returns and sees Cat’s father before his death. He and Cat reconcile, and he agrees to stay with her instead of returning to the moon.

As with Frankenstein, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter raises questions about the place of the other in society and the emotional capabilities of such creatures. In this vein, Finn is a sympathetic creature in that he operates on the fringes for most of the novel while falling for Cat. Strictly speaking, although a man doesn’t actually give birth in the story, it centers primarily on Finn’s origins and the role of Cat’s father in his development, and the frequent discussion of robotics, cybernetics, and engineering brings a cyberpunk flavor to the whole novel.

Administrative Notes: Molly Robertson, CSUF