Published by Thomas & Mercer on July 1, 2026
The Delivery is a modern version of the “robot gone bad” story. Modern because the mechanical robot of old has been replaced with a biological creature grown in a pod and given access to its owner’s entire digital life. From social media, text messages, emails, household appliances, and other “smart” technology the creature learns everything about its owner, the better to serve its needs.
Gregg Hurwitz does little to explain how this is accomplished. We know only that a pod is delivered and activated. After a time, a red light turns green and the creature steps out, showers off the goo in which it was brewed, and gets to work. It has gray skin, no hair, an average build, and generic male features (“well endowed but not grotesquely so”). The creature is programmed to solve the owner’s problems. It cooks, cleans, and does the shopping (while clad in sunglasses and a hat, which apparently hides its gray skin).
Hurwitz’s failure even to attempt a scientific explanation of the creature’s manufacturing process proves that he is better writer of thrillers than science fiction. It is difficult for a reader to suspend disbelief when a writer doesn’t offer a plausible scientific explanation for his central plot point.
Mark is one of three chief product officers for an “e-news content optimization company.” Mark is very well paid but his boss, unsurprisingly for a tech bro, wants Mark to devote his entire life to the company. Work demands can be difficult for Mark because he has a child on the spectrum. Maddy is a handful. Kids at school bully her, to the dismay of Rebecca, her mother. Rebecca doesn’t work outside the home but feels overwhelmed by housework and taking care of Maddy. Rebecca volunteers for the “kiss and ride drop off” at Maddy’s school, which adds to her stress.
Mark’s boss offers an unspecified solution to their family problems. He gives Mark a titanium business card for NORM LLC, started by “a South African technocrat.” We know who that is, right? Stamped into the back of the card is YOU’RE IN CHARGE. Mark’s boss doesn’t explain what that means, but tells Mark that the company makes a device, currently in beta testing that will “see to everything you really want. In your darkest heart of hearts.”
Mark is swimming in money so he plops down $225,000 and a few months later, the pod is delivered to his door. After a time, the gray man pops out, then politely cleans up the goo he tracks into the shower. Maddy names him Mr. Man.
Rebecca is delighted to wake up and smell the coffee that Mr. Man has brewed. All her problems seem to have been solved by the addition of Mr. Man — except for the irritating neighbor who makes daily complaints about the sap that the Higgins’ pine tree deposits on his roof.
The “robot gone bad” theme begins soon after Mr. Man’s arrival. It never occurs to Mark or Rebecca to give Mr. Man a simple instruction — don’t kill or harm any person or animal — even after they begin to suspect that Mr. Man is helping them by eliminating people who make them unhappy. Nor does it seem to occur to them that unplugging the charging pod would solve their problem.
I didn’t buy that a call to customer service was met with a threat to blackmail the family (the company enforces its “no return” policy by reminding Mark that Mr. Man knows everything there is to know about him). Why this deterred Mark is beyond me. In any event, concealing the fact that a product might go on a murder rampage hardly seems like a smart tactic for a company that plans to launch an IPO in the near future. I just don’t think Hurwitz thought through the details of story. Perhaps he regarded the technical details as unimportant, but to science fiction fans, verisimilitude matters.
The story’s moral is encapsulated in Rebecca’s thought “that humanity has reached the end of an era, that more and more of our work is being done for us, that we can outsource and push-button and delegate our tasks and needs until everything exists outside of us. Until we are hollow.” Living like the Amish might be spiritually satisfying but frankly, if a pod creature will clean the gutters for me, I’m willing to accept whatever degree of hollowness that delegation of manual labor to technology might cause.
A secondary moral is that we can’t trust corporations to act in our best interests. Well duh.
Both the novel’s moral points are worthy lessons to learn, but I’m not convinced that The Delivery teaches them effectively. The story is a bit dull, the characters are not particularly interesting, and the plot fails to generate tension. While the story held my interest, the ending is too easy and entirely too predictable. Hurwitz has done some good work in the thriller genre, but if The Delivery is any indication, science fiction is not his forte.
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