Wesblock, the Autobiography of an Automaton

In 1914, decades before computers or the word "artificial intelligence" entered our vocabulary, Harry McDonald Walters posed a question that still haunts us: what would a machine feel? Wesblock, an automaton born in Montreal, narrates his own existence in this startling, nearly forgotten novel. He was built, not born. He struggles to survive, grapples with his outcast status, and questions what it means to be alive when your wires are visible. The prose moves between stark philosophical inquiry and surprising warmth, as Wesblock recounts his delicate health, his complex family dynamics, and his encounters with life's mysteries. The narrative unfolds in fragmented memories and non-linear time, mirroring the disjointed perception of a consciousness unlike our own. This is not science fiction as we know it. It is stranger, more intimate: a machine trying to understand why it longs, an automaton's memoir that asks whether the soul can be assembled. Darkly funny, deeply sad, quietly revolutionary. For readers who found Klara and the Sun achingly beautiful, here is its great-grandfather.