The Robot Scientist's Daughter

The Robot Scientist's Daughter is a book of poetry by Jeannine Hall Gailey, published by Mayapple Press in 2015. This collection, Gailey's fourth, deals with ecological issues, with a specific focus on the potential dangers of the nuclear industry, set against the backdrop of growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the 1970s. "The poems that make up this collection move in a controlled way between fact and fiction, autobiography and fantasy, giving readers glimpses into the secret world surrounding ORNL in which Gailey grew up, at the same time as they tell the story of a fictional Robot Scientist's Daughter who was transformed by that world into something other, something monstrous."[1]

The Robot Scientist's Daughter
The Robot Scientist's Daughter cover art
AuthorJeannine Hall Gailey
Cover artistMasaaki Sasamoto
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry
PublisherMayapple Press
Publication date
March 1, 2015
Media typePrint (Paperback)
Pages82 pp
ISBN978-1-936419-42-5

Awards
  • Won second place in the 2016 Elgin Awards for full-length poetry books published in 2014 and 2015; presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA).[2]
  • Semifinalist in the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Poetry category.[3]

Reviews

Critical reviews of The Robot Scientist's Daughter have appeared in the following literary publications:

  • Escape Into Life[4]
  • Poetry International[5]
  • The Rumpus[1]
  • San Francisco Book Review[6]
  • Savvy Verse & Wit[7]
  • The Seattle Times[8]
  • Strange Horizons[9]
  • Tweetspeak[10]

References
  1. McMyne, Mary (February 28, 2015). "The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey". The Rumpus. Retrieved February 28, 2015. By the end of the collection, the story of the robot scientist's daughter's transformation becomes a metaphor not only for the effect of nuclear research on the individual residents of Oak Ridge, but also for the effects of nuclear power on the world as a whole.
  2. "2016 Elgin Awards". Science Fiction Poetry Association. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  3. "Goodreads Choice Awards 2015". Goodreads, Inc. Retrieved November 18, 2011.
  4. Kirk, Kathleen (2015). "The Robot Scientist's Daughter". Escape Into Life. Retrieved March 4, 2015. The Robot Scientist's Daughter herself is a persona, part autobiography, part popular culture composite comprised of depictions of scientists, daughters, and mutants in fiction, science fiction, and comics.
  5. Vorreyer, Donna (2015). "Book Review: The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey". Poetry International. Retrieved March 2, 2015. Gailey uses the language of science to lend authority, but at the heart of these poems is a deep and simultaneous love of and fear for humanity, found in the bodies impacted by sickness and helplessness and the hearts trying to reconcile scientific progress with a love of the natural world it is destroying.
  6. Dallas, Glenn (2015). "The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey". San Francisco Book Review. Retrieved June 4, 2015. Her work grapples with both a strongly conflicted relationship with her scientist father and the fallout (no pun intended) of Oak Ridge's debilitating effect on herself and those in her town. There is great beauty in her recollections of cesium-fueled foxfire and innocuous memories that seem sinister when the context of the modern day is applied.
  7. Agusto-Cox, Serena M. (2015). "The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey". Savvy Verse & Wit. Retrieved April 10, 2015. The Robot Scientist's Daughter is a remarkable, cohesive collection, built upon the same theme. It is a story of a unique childhood, and an American childhood. It is also the story of nature and technology, and the bargain we make between the two, often without fully understanding what we're doing.
  8. "New on the shelves: Orangette blogger's memoir, Sparky the hero reader". May 26, 2015. Retrieved June 4, 2015. Gailey, who recently served as Poet Laureate of Redmond, conjures a story about a natural world imperiled by the hidden dangers of our nuclear past. A little girl searches for secrets and survival amid a world complete with radioactive wasps and cesium in the sunflowers.
  9. Amen, John (April 11, 2016). "The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey: Reviewed by John Amen". Archived from the original on April 15, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2016. Gailey has offered a well-paced, vivid, and searing sequence of poems, her reminder that life is exquisite, even as it transforms, mutates, and devolves, even as we betray what might have been our destiny for another and less auspicious destiny, a crisis we may be unable to elude.
  10. Young, Glynn (March 31, 2015). "Poets and Poems: Jeannine Hall Gailey and The Robot Scientist's Daughter". Tweetspeak. Retrieved April 4, 2015. From butterflies born without eyes to the beautiful disaster that is the art of an explosion, the poet calls into question human curiosity and the vanity that sometimes comes with that, in which the scientist believes only good will result from research and experiments, despite historical evidence to the contrary.
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