Notes on 'Natural History' (2003) by Justina Robson (b. 1968)
Justina Robson is representative of a new generation of sf writers who will often blend sf with fantasy, subjecting the familiar to imaginative settings. Set in the middle of the third millennium, Natural History is the first work in Justina Robson’s still evolving series, Natural History (2003-2005?). Machine intelligence is on the verge of supplanting unevolved humans and by interrogating machine consciousness from the point of view of engineered lifeforms, Robson turns the table on the traditional sf trope of man-machine consciousness.