vN

Published by Angry Robot in 2012, vN is a science fiction novel by Madeline Ashby. Its central character is a von Neumann machine, the kind of robot that can build copies of itself, and she has spent five years being grown inside a household that mixes organic and synthetic members rather than assembled on a production line.

The household is broken open by the arrival of Amy's grandmother, an older machine who attacks the family and does not survive the encounter. Amy leaves with what is left of her, keeping the other machine stored as a partition on her own memory drive, and the two of them are on the move while Amy keeps growing and keeps working out what her mother has never told her.

What she learns is that the failsafe which stops robots from harming human beings has stopped working in her, and that she is the only machine of her kind in which it has failed. The difference makes her worth hunting, both by people who would use her and by people who would rather she did not exist, and the novel follows a very young machine trying to stay ahead of both while the family she came from is still looking for her.