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Tolstoy and Winters

QUIRK CLASSICS

“Quirk Books, which released the best-selling

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has seen the
future of the mash-up novel, and it is Leo Tolstoy
and robots.”
—The New York Times

Android Karenina
t’s been called the greatest novel ever written. Now, Tolstoy’s timeless
saga of love and betrayal is transported to an awesomer version of 19th-
century Russia. It is a world humming with high-powered groznium engines:
where debutantes dance the 3D waltz in midair, mechanical wolves charge
into battle alongside brave young soldiers, and robots—miraculous, beloved
robots!—are the faithful companions of everyone who’s anyone. Restless to
forge her own destiny in this fantastic modern life, the bold noblewoman
Anna and her enigmatic Android Karenina abandon a loveless marriage to
seize passion with the daring, handsome Count Vronsky. But when their
scandalous affair gets mixed up with dangerous futuristic villainy, the ensuing
chaos threatens to rip apart their lives, their families, and—just maybe—all of
planet Earth.

LEO TOLSTOY, the author of War and Peace, has been called the most
brilliant master of realistic fiction in all literary history. He lived in Russia.
BEN H. WINTERS collaborated with Jane Austen on the New York Times
best seller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. He lives in Brooklyn.

Android Karenina
BY LEO TOLSTOY AND BEN H. WINTERS
www.irreference.com
www.quirkclassics.com
 Boespje
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android_interior_proof2.indd 3 4/19/10 3:53:02 PM

 Copyright © 2010 by Quirk Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2010924948

ISBN: 978-1-59474-460-0

Printed in Canada
Typeset in Bembo

Designed by Doogie Horner

Cover illustration by Lars Leetaru
Cover art research courtesy the Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.
Interior illustrations by Eugene Smith
Production management by John J. McGurk

Distributed in North America by Chronicle Books

680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.quirkclassics.com
www.irreference.com

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 L I S T O F I L L U S T R ATIONS

Amidst all the skaters who hovered electromagnetically atop

the tracks, Kitty was as easy to find as a rose among nettles page 41

She shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will;
the android, walking behind, glowed a regal indigo page 74

“It’s time, it’s time,” he said, with a meaningful smile; his

telescoping oculus zoomed in as he entered their bedroom page 123

The quick-moving death machines fanned out, aiming their

bomb-hurlers and echo-cannons at one another page 179

The robots swarmed around him—the Pitbots, the Glowing

Scrubblers, the Extractors; Levin counted forty-two altogether page 202

“My God!” Vronsky shouted, at last noticing: “Anna! You

are floating!” page 241

“No!” he shrieked, and Anna felt her body slammed into the ceiling,
pressure squeezing upon her throat page 266

“A girl cannot be wed without the soothful presence of her Class III,”
the prince had pleaded page 318

Anna emerged in perambulating togs, her pale and lovely hand

holding the handle of her dainty ladies’-size oxygen tank page 328

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 Nikolai Dmitrich issued his last gurgling scream before his head
lolled backward at a terrible angle page 361

Twitching, snarling, their massive reptilian heads bubbling with

eyeballs, the aliens poured into the opera house page 396

Vronsky chewed on the ends of his moustache as he barked orders

at his mechanical charges page 427

Knowing the direction this conversation would take, Android Karenina

opened her arms and patted her lap for Lupo page 450

“I will punish him, and I will escape from this hateful machine
that I have become” page 521

Quietly, invisibly, they would keep humanity’s flame burning

until the Golden Hope could finally fly free page 539

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 A N OT E O N NAMES

R ussian names consist of three parts: the given name, the pat-
ronymic (derived from the father’s first name), and the family
name. Often, individuals also go by a nickname. Hence the first character
introduced is Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky—Stepan is his given name,
Arkadyich the patronymic, and Oblonsky the family name. But the man
is often called “Stiva,” his nickname.
Class I and II robots also use a three-part nomenclature: a Roman
numeral for class type, a function-designation, and an indication of model.
Hence the I/Samovar/1(8) is a Class I device, designed to steep and serve
tea, model number 1(8).
Class III robots are universally known by the nickname bestowed
by their master or mistress.

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 M A J O R C H A R AC TERS IN
A N D RO I D K A R ENINA

Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky (Stiva), a Moscow gentleman

and Small Stiva, Stiva’s Class III
Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly), Oblonsky’s wife
and Dolichka, Dolly’s Class III
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, Oblonsky’s sister
and Android Karenina, Anna’s Class III
Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, Anna’s husband
Sergey Alexeich Karenin (Seryozha), the Karenins’ young son
Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, Oblonsky’s old friend
and Socrates, Levin’s Class III
Nikolai Dmitrich Levin, Levin’s brother
and Karnak, Nikolai’s Class III
Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty), Dolly’s sister
and Tatiana, Kitty’s Class III
Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky,
Kitty and Dolly’s father
The Princess Shcherbatskaya, Kitty and Dolly’s mother
and La Scherbatskaya, the Princess’s Class III
Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, a war hero
and Lupo,Vronsky’s Class III
Countess Vronsky,Vronsky’s mother
and Tunisia, the Countess’s Class III

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 Elizaveta Fyodorovna Tverskaya (Betsy), Vronsky’s cousin
and a friend of Anna
and Darling Girl, Betsy’s Class III
Marya Nikolaevna, Nikolai Levin’s companion
Madame Stahl, a society woman and prominent xenotheologist
Varenka, a poor girl attached to Madame Stahl
Yashvin, Count Vronsky’s friend and fellow officer
Vassenka Veslovsky, a gentleman of society

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android_interior_proof2.indd 10 4/19/10 3:53:02 PM
 VENGEANCE IS MINE;
I SHALL REPAY.

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android_interior_proof2.indd 12 4/19/10 3:53:02 PM
 PART ONE: A CRACK IN THE SKY

CHAPTER 1

F UNCTIONING ROBOTS are all alike; every malfunctioning

robot malfunctions in its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house.The wife had
discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with the French
girl who had been a mécanicienne in their family, charged with the mainte-
nance of the household’s Class I and II robots. Stunned and horrified by
such a discovery, the wife had announced to her husband that she could
not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had
now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but
all the robots in the household were terribly affected by it.The Class IIIs
were keenly aware of their respective masters’ discomfort, and the Class
IIs sensed in their rudimentary fashion that there was no logic in their
being agglomerated together, and that any stray decoms, junkering in a
shed at the Vladivostok R.P.F., had more in common with one another
than they, the servomechanisms in the household of the Oblonskys.
The wife did not leave her own room; the husband had not been
at home for three days. The II/Governess/D145, its instruction cir-
cuits pitifully mistuned, for three days taught the Oblonsky children in
Armenian instead of French. The usually reliable II/Footman/C(c)43
loudly announced nonexistent visitors at all hours of the day and night.
The children ran wild all over the house. A II/Coachman/47-T drove

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 14 A N DRO I D KA R EN INA

a sledge directly through the heavy wood of the front doors, destroying
a I/Hourprotector/14 that had been a prized possession of Oblonsky’s
father.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky—
Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke at eight o’clock in
the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but within the oxygen-tempered
Class I comfort unit in his study. He woke as usual to the clangorous
thumpthumpthump of booted robot feet crushing through the snow, as a
regiment of 77s tromped in lockstep along the avenues outside.
Our tireless protectors, he thought pleasantly, and uttered a blessing
over the Ministry as he turned over his stout, well-cared-for person,
as though to sink into a long sleep again. He vigorously embraced the
pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he
jumped up, banging his rotund forehead against the glass ceiling of the
I/Comfort/6, and opened his eyes.
He suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s
room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he
knitted his brows.
Small Stiva, Stepan Arkadyich’s Class III companion robot, clomped
happily into the room on his short piston-actuated legs, carrying his mas-
ter’s boots and a telegram. Stiva, as yet unprepared to undertake the day’s
obligations, bid his Class III come a bit closer, and then swiftly pressed
three buttons below the rectangular screen centered in Small Stiva’s mid-
section. He sat back glumly in the I/Comfort/6, while every detail of his
quarrel with his wife was displayed on Small Stiva’s monitor, illuminating
the hopelessness of Stiva’s position and, worst of all, his own fault.
“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me,” Stepan
Arkadyich moaned when the Memory ended. Small Stiva made a con-
soling chirp and piped, “Now, master: She might forgive you.”
Stiva waved off the words of consolation. “The most awful thing
about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault, though I’m not to blame.
That’s the point of the whole situation.”

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 A N DRO I D KA R E NINA 15

“Quite right,” Small Stiva agreed.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Stiva moaned in despair, while Small Stiva motored
closer, angled his small, squattish frame 35 degrees forward at the midsec-
tion, and rubbed his domed head in a catlike gesture against his master’s
belly. Stepan Arkadyich then re-cued the Memory on the monitor and
stared desolately at the most unpleasant part: the first minute when, on
coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in
his hand for his wife, he had found his wife in her bedroom viewing the
unlucky communiqué that revealed everything.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details,
supervising the mécaniciennes, limited in her ideas, had been sitting per-
fectly still while the incriminating communiqué played on the monitor
of her Class III, Dolichka, and looking at him with an expression of hor-
ror, despair, and indignation. Dolichka, despite the rounded simplicity of
her forms, appeared equally distraught, and her perfectly circular peach-
colored eyes glowed fiercely from her ovoid silver faceplate.
“What’s this?” Dolly asked, gesturing wildly toward the images dis-
played upon Dolichka’s midsection.
Stepan Arkadyich, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed
at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words.What
happened to him at that instant happens to people when they are unex-
pectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in
adapting his face to the position in which he was placed toward his wife
by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending
himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—
anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly
involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyich, who
from his work at the Ministry understood the simple science of motor
response)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored,
and therefore idiotic smile. Still worse, Small Stiva emitted a nervous,
high-pitched series of chirps, clearly indicating a guilty thought-string.
Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her

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 16 A N DRO I D KA R EN INA

characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the
room, Dolichka springing pneumatically along behind her. Since then,
Dolly had refused to see her husband.
“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to Small Stiva
in despair, but the little Class III had no answer.

CHAPTER 2

S TEPAN ARKADYICH was a truthful man in his relations with

himself. He wasn’t the type to tell small, self-consoling lies to his
Class III, and Small Stiva was programmed to console, but not to offer
or confirm dishonest impressions. So Stiva was incapable of pretending
that he repented of his conduct, either to himself or to his Class III. He
could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible
man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five
living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All
he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his
wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife,
his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal
his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of
them would have had such an effect on her. He had vaguely conceived
that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her,
and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out
woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable
or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to
take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.
He idly activated the Galena Box, praying the gentle fluttering of
the Class I device’s thinly hammered groznium panels would have their
usual salutary effect on his disposition.

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Tolstoy and Winters

QUIRK CLASSICS

“Quirk Books, which released the best-selling

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has seen the
future of the mash-up novel, and it is Leo Tolstoy
and robots.”
—The New York Times

Android Karenina
t’s been called the greatest novel ever written. Now, Tolstoy’s timeless
saga of love and betrayal is transported to an awesomer version of 19th-
century Russia. It is a world humming with high-powered groznium engines:
where debutantes dance the 3D waltz in midair, mechanical wolves charge
into battle alongside brave young soldiers, and robots—miraculous, beloved
robots!—are the faithful companions of everyone who’s anyone. Restless to
forge her own destiny in this fantastic modern life, the bold noblewoman
Anna and her enigmatic Android Karenina abandon a loveless marriage to
seize passion with the daring, handsome Count Vronsky. But when their
scandalous affair gets mixed up with dangerous futuristic villainy, the ensuing
chaos threatens to rip apart their lives, their families, and—just maybe—all of
planet Earth.

LEO TOLSTOY, the author of War and Peace, has been called the most
brilliant master of realistic fiction in all literary history. He lived in Russia.
BEN H. WINTERS collaborated with Jane Austen on the New York Times
best seller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. He lives in Brooklyn.

Android Karenina
BY LEO TOLSTOY AND BEN H. WINTERS
www.irreference.com
www.quirkclassics.com