Saturn's Children
by Charles Stross
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles StrossEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-07-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Book Reviews of Saturn's Children
Book Review: Friday's child
Summary: 5 Stars
As many others have noted, this is a Heinlein take-off. I think the master would approve. It is strongly based on Heinlein's Friday. If you doubt it, look for the hotel reservation for F. Baldwin (Freya almost says either Freya or Friday Baldwin). Baldwin was Friday's boss and of course Friday comes from Freya. Friday, as an "artificial person" was regarded as less than human. Freya, derived from a robot now considered out of date is discriminated against because of her size. (She's tall, the "new people" are short. -- Heinlein would approve of turning convention upon its surly head.)
There is considerable attention to what is freedom and what it is to be chattel. The ways in which Freya or other robots can lose her freedom can be subtle or brutal (and sometimes both).
I rather like the way that Stross sets it up so that the robots must perforce have many of the qualities we associate with ourselves. Humans have found that the best way to make an intelligent robot was to make it's wiring mimic that of the human brain, and to train it much the same way that a human child is trained (years of development). It makes it plausible. But it leaves them with the problem that the robots, if not subject to a coercive programming, would be disobedient and independent, much like teenagers.
The robot sex is much discussed. It is interesting. Funny and ribald at times, sweet at others -- kind of like human sex.
Something that is really worth imaging, is the imagery of the book. We see Venus glowing in its heat from a platform miles above the surface. We see a moving city on Mercury. Fantastic visions from the orbit of Mars and on Mars. Callisto and then Eris, deep in the Kuiper belt. Space elevators, bootstrap devices, nuclear rockets and magnetic field manipulators.
(About the some of these, a good read is Gerard t'Hooft's "Playing with Planets)
This is science fiction, baby!
Summary of Saturn's Children
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct?leaving only androids behind. Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.Literature & Fiction Books
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