{"id":77959,"date":"2026-10-04T20:54:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T03:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=77959"},"modified":"2026-10-04T20:54:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T03:54:24","slug":"book-review-building-baby-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=77959","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Building Baby Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I could have sworn I’d done a review of Building Baby Brother<\/em> by Steven Radecki before, but I can’t find it here. I found a place where I said I would do it, but that was about a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spending a day with Steven yesterday, selling books — including Building Baby Brother<\/em> — it’s time I posted my review for all to see. Or at least, the people that visit this blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Short Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here is the short review in case you don’t want any<\/em> of the story spoiled: This is a fine, short, soft SciFi novel that doesn’t overstay its welcome, and deviates from some of the typical tropes you usually see in similar stories. It’s not a perfect story, but it does its job well enough that I’m comfortable selling it and recommending it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Long Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A young boy, Josh, asks his recently divorced father for a little brother. The father distracts Josh with the promise of more toys, dodges the bullet, but the idea is stuck in his head, further complicated by watching the movie AI by Kubrick and Spielberg. As a software developer by trade, he gets the idea that maybe, just maybe, he can give Josh exactly what he wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re hoping for some harder SciFi around building the robot and AI, you’ll be disappointed. The story sort of handwaves the construction of the child robot away. There probably could have been a version of this story where we see the father struggle more to bring his constructed child to life, but this is a shorter story, and we don’t spend too much time lingering on overcoming the technical achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh is introduced to his new robot baby brother, which is named Gavin, and they hit it off. Gavin’s prime directive, as it were, is to make Josh happy, and part of that is learning and growing, to become a better brother to Josh over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin grows beyond his creator’s expectations, and there are several sections where the father and Gavin converse about Gavin and Gavin’s perspective. These sections remind me the most of stories about Data in Star Trek:TNG, which I very much like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t want to go too much more into what happens next. I don’t want to spoil the whole story. I will say that other stories like this, where the robot is created and begins to grow beyond its creator’s intentions, the robot turns evil and has to be put down for the good of humanity. That’s not where this story goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, this story is less concerned with science, engineering, robotics, and AI. It’s really about the experience of being a parent, watching your children grow, and learning to let them go when they no longer need you. In that way, the story is very sweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a few nitpicks I could go into with regards to some of the details, but none of what I have to say on that is important at all. And some of those nitpicks include spoilers for the end of the story, so I’ll keep those to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will say that I was reading a version of Building Baby Brother<\/em> that was rife with formatting and editing mistakes. I found those very distracting. The version that is out there now has those things fixed. While at the table yesterday, I had both versions available to me and was able to look and see how the editing mistakes were fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a link<\/a> where you can buy Building Baby Brother<\/em> directly from the publisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a link<\/a> where you can get it from bookshop.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also on Amazon, but I’ll let you find that link on your own. Bezos doesn’t need the extra advertisement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s short. It reads relatively quickly. And Steven Radecki is a great guy, and I think it would make his heart swell if you were to buy his book and give it a read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you do, let me know what you think of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I could have sworn I’d done a review of Building Baby Brother by Steven Radecki before, but I can’t find it here. I found a place where I said I would do it, but that was about a year ago. After spending a day with Steven yesterday, selling books — including Building Baby Brother — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77960,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77959\/revisions\/77960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}