Robotic Ambitions: Tales of Mechanical Sentience

Whether striving to protect the family they’ve chosen, searching for meaning amid the chaos of the world, or questioning what it is that makes one alive, robotic ambition can mean many different things. Robotic Ambitions: Tales of Mechanical Sentience explores the nuance of sentience manufactured and evolved within mechanical beings. It peels back the metal exterior and takes a hard look at what is inside.

Within these pages you will discover stories of robots defying their coding for a chance at love, resisting societal norms so that they may experience art and pleasure, and searching for their place in a world that was not made for them, but rather was made to use them. These are stories about striking out on your own, building something new amid destruction, and doing whatever it takes to make sure you survive. Robots and AI are more than tools for humanity. They have their own goals, dreams, and aspirations. This anthology includes stories by Lavie Tidhar, Premee Mohamed, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Jason Sanford, and many more.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Martha Wells
It-Who-Dreams-Under-Grey-Clouds in The-Town-Within-The-City by Marie Croke
She Builds Quick Machines by Lyndsie Manusos
Out There With Them by N.V. Haskell
Prospecting by Lavie Tidhar
The Caregivers by Marie Vibbert
The Town Full of Broken Tin Men by Danny Cherry Jr.
Ark by Liam Hogan
A Still Life by Elliott Wink
The City in the Forest by Premee Mohamed
An Incomplete Record of Databank Deltions, in Alphabetical Order by Mar Vincent
Built to Cheat by Derrick Boden
The Big Book of Grandmamas by Sheree Renée Thomas
Everything else is advertising by J Wallace
Alice & Lucy by Edward Daschle
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Izzy Wasserstein
A Lifeline of Silk by Renan Bernardo
Little Fathers of Darkness by Jason Sanford
Solar Sonata for Four Hands by Jennifer R. Donohue
Tenets of Ascendance by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Somtu Ihezue
Intersecting Datafields by Myna Chang
A Fragility, a Shaddow by Leah Ning
Insatiable Life by Kathleen Schaefer
Ribbit by Mona West
How to Get to Be a Three-Thousand-Year-Old-Mining AI by Nick Hartland
An Android in the Desert by Rachel Gutin

About the Editors

Lesley Conner is the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine, as well as a writer and a Girl Scout leader. Her first novel The Weight of Chains was published by Sinister Grin Press in September, 2015. She has co-edited four anthologies with Jason Sizemore, including Do Not Go Quietly and Apex Magazine 2021. Their newest anthology Robotic Ambitions was released in November, 2023. She lives in Maryland with her husband, daughters, and her dog Oz, and is currently working on a new novel. To find out all her secrets, you can follow her on Twitter at @LesleyConner, on Instagram at @lesley_conner, and BlueSky at @lesleyconner.bsky.social.

Jason Sizemore is the owner and publisher of Apex Book Company and Apex Magazine. He was the editor-in-chief of Apex Magazine for seven years and has edited or co-edited ten anthologies. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award multiple times and picked up a Stoker nomination for his first anthology, Aegri Somnia. Currently, he lives in Lexington, KY, where he runs Apex from a dark basement office.