Technology in Youth Fiction -- Human Computer Interaction

Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality

Several middle-grade novels featuring computers have the machines act as companions for lonely characters, often through the characters becoming part of the machine or a virtual companion coming out of the computer.

In Justine Rendal’s A Very Personal Computer ^[49], Pollard, the misfit protagonist, gets a computer that starts to interact with him. It does his homework and helps him become more popular: athletic and able to make friends and date confidently. This virtual companion is a safe outlet for Pollard, who has recently lost his mother and his dog, and is unable to cope with emotion.

Dan Gutman’s Virtually Perfect ^[50] also feature a virtual companion that Yip manages to free from the confines of the computer that created him. Victor, the virtual child, is smart, good-looking, and funny, but there is also a troublesome side to him. Yip goes from being jealous of Victor's social ease, to being frightened at his lack of moral sense, and must decide how to deal with this troublesome creation, who, in spite of everything, seems almost human.

A variation on this theme is found in Marilyn Watts’ The Graphicat ^[51] where a virtual cat is let loose from the computer program that spawned it and causes trouble for the main characters who have to catch it and figure out how to put it back.

Interaction with computers in the other direction (i.e. characters entering their computers) is key to the plot of Terence Blacker’s The Transfer where an aspiring soccer star tries to improve his skills by downloading the powers from a virtual player into his body.^[52]

In Dean Marney’s The Computer that Ate my Brother ^[53], Harry gets a new computer for his twelfth birthday. He is surprised to discover that he is able to talk to it and that it seems to understand human emotions. Things get out of hand when the computer makes Harry's hated older brother disappear. Harry must decide if he wants him back, and how to accomplish that.

Companionship between humans and computers is explored in Eye to Eye ^_[54] by Catherine Jinks. A spaceship, run by a central computer with the ability to reason and learn, has crashed on a primitive planet. The computer tries to communicate with Jansi, a scavenger who discovers the ship. He mistakes it for the society’s supreme god when PIM, the computer, begins to talk to him. PIM shows stored images of past events to try and get Jansi to learn how to send an SOS to Stelcorp to rescue the ship. PIM and Jansi continue to bond, resulting in PIM taking on some of Jansi's emotions, including a desire for survival which leads the two into an alliance against the rescue team.