William

A smart home turns into a house of horrors in this suspenseful outing from Coile (Oracle, written as Andrew Pyper). Henry, a robotics engineer, and his wife, Lily, a software company founder, are living in the “fantasy of the Upstate College Town.” When Lily’s friends Davis and Paige stop by for brunch, Henry—an agoraphobe with self-esteem issues—decides to show them the robot he has been building. William, the robot, is smart and articulate, but so indifferent to the danger his aggressive behavior poses to the pregnant Lily and her guests that Henry tries dismantling him—whereupon William appears to flex his will through the home’s integrated security system to imprison the quartet. Coile expertly imagines the sort of ghoulish snares a cybernetic environment could spring upon its unprepared captives and throws in a late-inning explanation for the source of William’s apparent sociopathy that is as believable as it is chilling. It’s a frightening Frankenstein fable for the age of AI. (Sept.)