Brain

Cook, Robin. Brain. New York: Putnam's, 1981. New York: Signet-NAL, 1982.

Very similar to RC's earlier Coma (q.v. below), Brain begins with a descent motif echoing Dante's Inferno and climaxes with an image of young women in a room that "was a marriage between a hospital and a computer installation"; the women are "preparations" for developing true AI (ch. 9). Since crucial institutions in the US establishment are implicated in the operation, the room is the lowest point of a hellish world.