Is there a word for the opposite of solipsism? Or is there a way to Voight-Kampff yourself?

The book is about a sex robot and her whatever you should call the other person in the relationship. It is science fiction. No, wait, it is science fiction? Not a question of the fictional science, which does what it needs to. It is allegory, so on the nose that it approximates satire.

Their relationship is an abusive one. I suppose that could count a spoiler, but if it is, I feel like I have done you a favor in that if you did not implicitly understand that from the description, then the existential risk of AI is you. Any story like this is about that, with a carve out for sexually gratifying material, so the question is more what the author does with it.

The problem, then, is that the author does not. The book's weakness is its plot. Not its narrative, which was a page-turner, full of different emotions, but I was confused by the ending, surprised not in the facts of it, but that it was chosen as the ending. What is going on here is a core science fiction concept of using science to examine an aspect of humanity with a sort of naive point of view. And it succeeds at that, in surprising ways. Even paradoxical ways, like the sort of awkward language and perspective in the book that adds to to its charm and weight. I feel, for instance, a lot of authors would have built this more as a thriller or domestic noir, but here we get all of the terror of those things out of the restraint of the book. There is a flatness to the characters and a sort of smallness to the world, but it again serves the book's themes in general and puts the focus on what the author wants you to focus on, the sort of darkest Hallmark movie imaginable.

And, personally, getting into the headspace that is here is disorienting in a pleasurable way. I find that odd, but sometimes it works.