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The Warm Machine by Aimee Cozza

When a robot built for construction work first sees an angular, sleek prototype military robot slink onto the base he's working outside of, he immediately falls in love. The problem is, only anomalous bots understand the concept of love, and the lowly laborbot has not deviated from his default programming once. So he thinks, anyway. When the laborbot is scheduled for decommission, the military bot cannot possibly live without him, and the two bots set out on a path to find the fabled anomalous robot utopia Root. COVER ARTIST: Aimee Cozza PUBLISHER: 9mm Press YEAR: 2024 LENGTH: 196 pages  AGE: Adult GENRE: Science Fiction RECOMMENDED: Highly Queer Rep Summary: The main characters are robots, likely closest to aro/ace but those terms aren't quite applicable. Gender is also not an important factor. THE WARM MACHINE plays with ideas of friendship, connection, and searching for utopia, all through the lens of a construction robot who falls in love at first sight with a military bot....

Animorphs Book 40: The Other by K. A. Applegate

This book confronts the Andalite ableism that has been shown since early in the series. It examines norms, friendships, and prejudices through an alien lense. This is all during a high-stakes life or death mission that’s standard for this series.

I appreciate the angle taken in this book, it acknowledges human ableism while pushing back on ableist language in general using a sci-fi analogue. On the podcast we frequently find ourselves using the concept of a magical analogue as a way to examine a type of trauma while keeping it separate from what the reader could actually experience. This book confronts both the specific Andalite prejudice against physical disabilities and non-normative bodies, while also using the Animorphs’ particular situation to push against any idea of a “normal” that could be used to judge and demean anyone.

For Marco this is a break from the ongoing issue of Visser One, but even though nothing changes on that front it’s clear that it weighs on him. This isn’t a light book, but it deals with a different issue than Marco normally faces, which itself can be a break of a kind.

A boy (Marco) turns into a bee

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