Abandoning the Box is a science fiction novel that follows the story of an artificially intelligent droid named Franklin Stein that was created to be just like a human and starts off by trying to prove his humanity. He is not your average droid as he has emotions and is empathetic towards humans.

Eventually, Franklin reproduces and the droids become naturally integrated into society, albeit slowly. Their integration led to an acceleration of the development of new technologies. However, this comes at the cost to earth's ability to support so many new life forms.