Robots and artificial intelligence, according to Thomson, are not inhuman, but are all too human in striving for self-knowledge and self-ownership.

Arnold, an underground computer wiz, constructs an illegal robot in the form of a woman and calls her Maggie. In the course of programming and readjusting Maggie to cope with all the sensory input she receives, her program collapses. Her final voice instructions from Arnold given to initiate her systems defenses are only partially heard. Instead of “You are the most important things I have ever done,” She shuts down and only hears “You are the most important thing.”

This statement becomes the building block of her internal self-reconstruction, and to libertarians it resembles the natural-rights concept of self-ownership that makes her own survival paramount. From this base she builds a world view consistent with emotional self-interest.

When Maggie becomes separated from Arnold during a random mugging, she has to learn to fend for herself. Her previous dependence on Arnold and her lack of knowledge of social ways, as well as public animosity toward all forms of Artificial Intelligence, make this survival precarious, tragic, and at times strangely funny.

Virtual Girl, Thompson's first novel, is an interesting and well-told story, with several libertarian touches in characterization and social sketches. The questions of whether Artificial Intelligence creations have rights apart from their creators is a topic that, in its technological potential today, soon may move from the realm of speculative fiction into news magazines and the court room.