All fiction writers have a God complex – they want to be a creator. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, in which a scientist usurped the role of God by creating a sentient creature. It was intended to be regarded as a shocking blasphemy that could only lead to disaster, but it’s something that fiction writers have done from the dawn of fiction writing. The irony, of course, is that Mary Shelley herself created Victor Frankenstein.

Our creations are invariably caught in the usual religious controversies. Are they subject to predestination, because we have planned, to the last jot and tittle, exactly what they will think, say, do and become, or do they have free will and go off on tangents we weren’t expecting, because they know much better than us how they would really behave? Either way, we reserve the power to deliver salvation or damnation. Or eternal life if…