adriennefoster's Full Review: Charles Stross - Saturn's Children
The deadline has passed and the deciding votes for the 2009 Hugo Awards are currently being tallied. As one of the five nominees for best new novel in 2008, Saturn’s Children stands a chance of winning. Hate to say it, but this is one book review that’s going be personal. While I managed to finish reading it for the sake of voting consideration, this one simply held little appeal to me.
By the 23rd century, humans have become extinct, but androidkind lives on. Robot design had become so sophisticated their manufacturers not only gave them personalities, but sentience too. Freya Nakamichi-47 is an android based on the Rhea template, whose purpose was to fulfill the sexual needs of humans. She is an awkward model, since recently-made robots are made to fulfill more practical purposes and are much shorter to boot. To make her status even more gratuitous, she was activated after the human race died. Her existence was brought about because androids developed an interest in music and her model line also adapt well to the trend.
As the story opens, Freya is contemplating suicide by jumping off a building on Venus when she is interrupted by a trio of bullies who want to bash her around or install a slave chip in her for being an obsolete android. She escapes her attackers and tries to formulate a plan to leave the planet when she’s offered a lucrative job as a courier. On agreeing to consider the work, she is sent to Mercury where she is to be briefed. As much as she dreads the long space journey, she accepts the assignment to transport something to Mars and ships off.
Author Charles Stross does nothing to hide his admiration for the old masters of science fiction, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The three laws of robotics preface the story and he honors Heinlein by naming a city after him.
In some respects, this novel is reminiscent of the book Friday, by Heinlein. This may not be the best endorsement for it, but Freya is never gang-raped and she misses the reactions that many female readers found so offensive with Friday. Considering the reading audience lives in a time when the sex industry is creating full-size, life-like dolls and Blow-up Betties with accommodating orifices, it’s only reasonable to expect that by the 23rd century it would develop androids capable of fornication. And if that’s what they’re programmed for, we should additionally expect to do it a lot. At least Stross shows more empathy for the female gender than Heinlein did.
On a personal level, it was hard to connect with a universe void of humans. These androids may have sentience, but even if their “bodies” are destroyed, they can still be repaired or their soul chip moved to another. It’s kind of difficult to appreciate their sense of jeopardy.
Stross’s writing style was also off-putting. First-person narrative restricts viewpoint when it can often be fun to explore what others are thinking. The use of present tense comes off as a pretentious way to do something stylish and becomes irritating. He also uses quite a few big words, most of which are made up, that become tedious after a while.
One of the rival novels for the Hugo is The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, who is also this year’s Author Guest of Honor at Worldcon and may have the advantage over the others. Unfortunately, personal appeal is a valid consideration regardless of whether the reader is writing a review or voting on an award. Saturn’s Children barely rates recommending, but the overall craftsmanship of this novel is sound. It’s more a matter of taste. But who knows? I could be in the minority.
Freya Nakamichi-47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a my...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.