I remember loving this as a teen.. I still love this book--a lot of books I loved back as a young reader don't hold up but this did on reread. And despite being 30 years old, it doesn't feel dated--itself unusual for a work of science fiction.
I love Tanith Lee's style, which manages to feel sensuous and lush without ever sounding purple. This work is reminiscent in some ways of her other science fiction works, Bite the Sun and Sapphire Wine. Those are set in the far future and dealt with teens in a fairly loopy dystopia/utopia. In the case of Silver Metal Lover, Earth attracted an asteroid which attached itself in orbit "causing a third of Eastern Europe" to sink and North America to gain "seventy-two Pacific Islands" and killed a third of the world's population. This is a utopia (mostly) if you're very rich, and very much not so (mostly) if you're poor. Some of the hedonistic rich literally living up in the clouds such as with Jane's home "Chez Stratos" and the poor in Earthquake-racked slums below among noxious purple-colored rivers. The novel's world-building is organic to the story and well-imagined.
Also like those two other novels, this work is told first-person from a female point of view, but this is a very different voice. Jane, the narrator and protagonist, is only sixteen-years-old when the novel begins. This is very much a coming of age tale, although I wouldn't call it "Young Adult" in genre even though it's about a teen, and I loved the book as a teen, since there is very frank sexual content (although no explicit sex scenes.) Jane's a girl that her very imposing mother has cut to a pattern that doesn't fit her. It's a pattern she begins to change when she meets the silver metal lover of the title: Registration Silver. That is S.I.L.V.E.R. Which stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Versimulated Electronic Robot. Jane's friends are also well-drawn here--the overdramatic, self-absorbed actress Egyptia, the sarcastic "mirror-based" (ie gay) friend Clovis, the sly twins Jason and Medea.
Speaking of "mirrors" I think there's still an open question in the book if that's all Silver was--a mirror that only reflected and let Jane see herself. Jane herself questions the healthiness of her loving a robot, and Silver warns her from the beginning that he's programed to please--and it's clear she wants him to be human and to love her. Even his coloring is suggestive of his mirror-like properties. Yet when reading the story the author paints such a poignant portrait of love it's hard not to love them together, and I loved how the author drew the Jane's growing self-confidence and abilities.
A friend of mine told me the sequel, Metallic Love, published over 20 years later, isn't nearly as good. A shame--because the original in holding up decades later in my estimation deserves to be called a classic. I have several Tanith Lee books on my bookshelves, this may very well be my favorite. But I don't see her being sold in bookstores these days, and I think that's a shame given the quality of her writing.
Edit: Reading Metallic Love, I'm rather sorry I have. It's a very different book, and I'd rather the author had let the original stand alone.
