Mary Beth knows that babies need total devotion, and that they are unlikely to get it from their fathers, so when she sets off to fly the solar wind to Mars, she leaves Wim Morris and Baby in the care of a Total Devotion Machine. Only the Total Devotion Machine has ideas of its own about parenting.

A reviewer comments:

'Displaying a breathtaking ability for lateral thinking, Love takes many familiar science fiction themes--space travel, extra-terrestrial contact, artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, test-tubes babies, transpecific solidarity, and so on---and twists them together with strands from the history of science and technology, classical and aboriginal mythology, power play and foibles from academe, and, most important, deep irony and flights of fantasy.'
Peter Taylor, 'Feminist tales' in Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 16 No. 4, Autumn 1991, pp540-3.

Many of the stories in The Total Devotion Machine have been reprinted in in Australian, British and US anthologies. The story of 'The Total Devotion Machine' has appeared in Uneasy Truces (ed Karen Lamb)1990, Metaworlds (ed Paul Collins), Centaurus (ed David Hartwell and Damien Broderick 1999). 'Alexia and Graham Bell' has appeared in Women of Wonder (ed Pamela Sargeant 1995), 'Trickster' in Mortal Fire (ed Terry Dowling and Van Ikin 1993).

In 1983, the story 'Laws of Life' won the state of Victoria short story award.

For a critical take on the stories, see the article by Phillip Edmonds, 'Unfashionable in literary terms', Overland volume 153, 1998, p. 17.