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About The Book

Nominated for the Phillip K. Dick Award, a science fiction fairy tale set in a collapsing future America about a girl and the android she falls in love with.

When Cat Novak was a young girl, her father brought Finn, an experimental android, to their isolated home. A billion-dollar construct, Finn looks and acts human, but he has no desire to be one. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection.

His primary task now is to tutor Cat. Finn stays with her, becoming her constant companion and friend as she grows into adulthood. But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, Finn struggles to find his place in the world. As their relationship goes further than anyone intended, they have to face the threat of being separated forever.

About The Author

Photo by Brittany Lincoln

Cassandra Rose Clarke is the author of Star Trek: Prodigy: A Dangerous TradeStar Trek: The Next Generation: Shadows Have OffendedOur Lady of the IceMagic of Blood and SeaMagic of Wind and MistStar’s EndHalo: Battle Born, and Halo: Battle Born: Meridian Divide. She grew up in south Texas and currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she tends to multiple cats. Cassandra’s first adult novel, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award, and her YA novel, The Assassin’s Curse, was nominated for YALSA’s 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction. Visit her at CassandraRoseClarke.com.  

Product Details

  • Publisher: S&S/Saga Press (November 8, 2016)
  • Length: 336 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781481461696

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Raves and Reviews

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is a deeply engaging tale beautifully told. Cassandra Rose Clarke is a superb writer and this spellbinding novel should appeal to genre and mainstream readers equally.”

– Graham Joyce, author of The Silent Land

“Cassandra Rose Clarke has delivered a novel that is brave enough to take on one of the largest issue’s confronting all of us today—just what exactly it means to be human in a time when the definition of such seems to alter almost daily in the face of whirlwind technological change. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is a haunting, memorable, and very original love story, told in an alluringly graceful prose.”

– Peter LaSalle, author of Tell Borges If You See Him: Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism

“Cat is a finely etched character, difficult, distant, and living in denial of her true feelings for years … Cassandra Rose Clarke does a fine job of staying inside her protagonist’s head, and capturing what it’s like to drift through life without the will or the opportunity to make the best decisions.”

– Sci Fi Magazine

"It's a neat premise and Clark examines the ramifications with the precision of a poet, eschewing the genre's typical preoccupation with science and opting instead for a dramatisation of the love affair...this is SF for admirers of The Time Traveller's Wife."

– The Guardian

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