It is a traditional idea in Japanese Kabuki theater that mankind is forever torn between the conflicting demands of duty and love. In the Kabuki, as in much of Japanese life, duty must win.

In Victor Milán's new novel, The Cybernetic Samurai the hero—the world's first sentient computer—is torn between the demands of duty and love, duty and justice, and duty and free will.

The computer-being, who is named Tokugawa by his creator Dr. Elizabeth O'Neill, begins his life as innocently (and ignorantly) as a child. He has the accumulated knowledge of the world at the tips of his digits but, for a time, he has even less idea of his own capacities or of the nature of the world than would a five-year-old speed-reader in a library. * O'Neill indoctrinates him with traditional Japanese values through software-generated "experiences" But he is not merely a machine and is not fully programmable.

Tokugawa has the somewhat annoying habit of calling people over their com-stations in the middle of the night to ask questions. Here is part of a fun late-night exhange between the "young" Tokugawa and his strictly unauthorized mentor (a physicist and a "half-pacifist libertarian") y Michiko.

"'What is a dictatorship?'

'Can't you look that up? Never mind. A representative government, run by an absolute ruler, with an army and secret police to make people obey him. '

'....Isn't that a good thing? Dr. O'Neill says people should obey their lords. The trouble with people today is they have so few lords worth obeying.'

'She said that?' Michiko frowned. 'I'll agree there are few lords worth obeying these days—but I'd say there are none worth obeying, ever.'

But this is not a funny novel, except in rare instances. It is harsh, bloody, terrible—which makes some sense considering that the story is set sometime in the early 21st Century between the Third and Fourth World Wars. If we are unfortunate enough to suffer two more world wars, these awful things will happen, and we'd better know it.

Milán describes a world that, although not completely destroyed, is heading toward destruction rapidly. Japan is the last refuge of a dying free market, and that freedom is mostly illusion. One corporate head, Yoshimitsu Akali—who happens to be Michiko's father—refuses to be controlled by the Japanese bureaucracy. When his team of scientists, led by the American Elizabeth O'Neill, develops Tokugawa, Japan's frightened and jealous "leaders" decide Yoshimitsu and his holdings must be eliminated. Only Tokugawa and Michiko can try and save the company, and ultimately, Japan.

Samurai, to firmly document its libertarian credentials, is the story of what happens to people who want to be free in a world gone totalitarian. It is what happens when people fall to learn that violence will boomerang back at the initiators. It's what happens when we—and others like us—haven't convinced enough people that peace and freedom are necessary to human existence, especially in a technological world.

Samurai asks "what if" in the same way that Orwell's 1984 does, without, luckily, the totally abysmal ending. Here, at least, some just desserts are served. But we want more than justice. We want to live, and live in freedom.