Hamlet, Prince of Robots, M. Darusha Wehm
Hamlet, Prince of Robots, M. Darusha Wehm
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Hamlet, Prince of Robots

Author: M. Darusha Wehm

Narrator: M. Darusha Wehm

Unabridged: 3 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/10/2025

Synopsis

Something is rotten in the state of cybernetics.Elsinore Robotics is on the cusp of a breakthrough—the company is poised to create the first humanoid androids powered by true artificial intelligence. Their only rival, Norwegian Technologies, lost a publicly streamed contest between their flagship model, Fortinbras, and Elsinore’s HAM(let) v.1. But when the first Hamlet model is found irreparably deactivated, the apparent victim of wild malware, the field of consumer cybernetics is thrown wide open. However, Hamlet v.1’s memories were not entirely lost in the accident. Hamlet v.2 swears to avenge his progenitor, but is plagued by the aftereffects of integrating Old Hamlet’s backup into his own neural matrix. Beset by doubts about whether his feelings are truly his own, he worries his love for his boyfriend, Horatio, is an illusion, all the while driven by a consuming need for revenge. While he has a method, there is a madness in it, and Hamlet’s actions will leave no corner of Elsinore unscathed.A beat-by-beat retelling of the Shakespeare classic, *Hamlet, Prince of Robots* grapples with conscience, ambition, and pain, and what it means to be, or not to be, human.

About M. Darusha Wehm

M Darusha Wehm is the Nebula Award-nominated and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of the interactive fiction game The Martian Job, several SF and YA novels, and the Andersson Dexter cyberpunk detective series. Originally from Canada, Darusha now lives in New Zealand after spending several years sailing the Pacific.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Collin on August 28, 2023

2023 is the year of android/robot versions of Hamlet, the other being The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu. I can only hope that one is a little more well-conceived. Hamlet, Prince of Robots is the barest of bare-bones, shorter than the original play, I'd assume, with a fraction of the emotional resona......more

Goodreads review by Hazel on March 31, 2024

This was the laziest retelling I've ever read. The worldbuilding was sloppy and vague, the characters were barely developed and inconsistent, and the author constrained themselves by following the original play too closely in certain sections, to the story's detriment. I've only read Hamlet once, an......more

Goodreads review by Translator on January 13, 2023

Well, this was just a good old-fashioned re-engineered Shakespearean automaton whodunnit with plenty of allusions to the Bard's better known plays. The first 20 pages or so found me trying to keep track with the parallels with the play I haven't read in some 40 years, but after that, I was in Wehm's......more

Goodreads review by monika on May 10, 2025

I believe this book would benefit from not following Hamlet “beat by beat,” as it sets out to do, and instead included some additional scenes, going more in depth into the characters’ lives and the relationships between them. the premise is very interesting, and as half of the characters are robots,......more

Goodreads review by Dawn on December 30, 2022

(Review originally published at historythatneverwas.com) M. Darusha Wehm’s Hamlet, Prince of Robots is an absolutely brilliant retelling of Hamlet that hits every note of Hamlet while updating the story to a science-fantasy future in which life-like robots are the technological battleground between t......more

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