David Levy's thesis in Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships is straightforward though disconcerting: by 2050, humanoid robots will be viable and, indeed, common sexual and romantic partners for human beings. Though this premonition may be thoroughly off-putting to some, Levy, an "internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence," makes well-reasoned and firmly buttressed arguments for its inevitability.

Since Levy is by training and temperament a computer programmer, Love and Sex unfolds in an analytical and syllogistic way. The first half sets out to prove that human beings can indeed love robots, and the second, spicier, section is given over to showing that we will, and in fact already do, have sex with robots.

Levy moves briskly through the question posed by everyone from Provençal poet Arnaut Daniel to one-hit wonder Haddaway — namely, what is love? Summarily dispensing with this question — love is heightened attachment, he claims — Levy proceeds to answer why we love, how we love, and whom we love. The answer to the last question is, obviously, the most pertinent. Among the things we love, he points out, are our pets and our computers, and if we love pets and computers, eventually we can love computerized pets and even robots.

The second half of the book traces the rise of sex dolls, from their inception (ancient Greece's Pygmalion and Galatea) to their current wild popularity in Japan. Along the way, Levy threads in colorful anecdotes. The story of the great abstract-expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka is guaranteed to raise eyebrows: Kokoschka commissioned a life-size doll of Gustave Mahler's wife, Alva, after she called off their tryst.

The book leaves no other alternative than to realize that love and sex with robots is all but assured — Levy, for one, thinks it's not only likely, but lovely, too.

-Joshua David Stein