Saturn's Children - Charles Stross

Robot Development

In reading Saturn's Children I enjoyed how Charles Stross explained the motivations behind the wants and needs of the robot Freya.He,using his background as a software engineer takes Heinlein and Asimov vision of robots and gives them a whole series of future development as we see their wants,needs and desires.All of these are subject to the programming inflicted on them by the Creators,ie humans.His humor bursts through the book and as earlier reviews indicate,well worth a read.

Hilarious at turns, interesting always

Saturn's Children is dedicated to the memories of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Heinlein gets name-checked in the book, as does John Scalzi and Richard Dawkins.

Saturn's Children imagines a time after we humans have mysteriously gone extinct -- leaving only our intelligent, but enslaved, robots behind. Freya 47 is one such robot, a courtesan designed ultimately to pleasure her male customers; hard-wired into her brain is a lust for her One True Love. Which would be fine, except that he, along with the whole human race, stopped existing many years before Freya's creation. She and her sister sibs (Freya, and her sisters, are all based upon the template matriarch of a robot called Rhea) are left with nothing to do except explore the galaxy. Many of them will kill themselves from despair. Others are simply incredibly bored.

An aristocracy, of sorts, has developed -- the robots with enough wealth and hired thugs control those without money and thugs. Of course, even the aristos aren't really free. They don't admit the fact, but show them a live Creator and they'd be on their knees before them. Which is one reason why the aristos, amongst others, are keen to keep their Creators dead, despite the technology of the black labs, which are capable of producing "pink goo" -- flesh. But anyone with a live, and tractable, Creator could wield enormous power, and perhaps even enslave the galaxy...

Which is why it falls to a sex robot, and an organisation of butlers, to stop them, getting very confused, and often aroused, in the process...

I'm not sure why I find this book so hard to review. I liked it a lot. It was perhaps the funniest of Stross' latest books, especially at the beginning -- to the extent that I was reading out whole passages to people, leaving them in hysterics from Freya's pessimistic view of space travel and other such things. Freya is our narrator, and the story is told in first-person, so it's natural that she be the most fleshed out (un-pun not intended), but I also enjoyed the characterisation of the butler Jeeves'. With no masters to serve, their organisation has begun to dabble in politics, and it's clear that not all Jeeves' are the same -- some are cold, and cruel, and not at all worried about doing nasty back-stabbing things to any sex robots that cross their path.

There is a fair amount of sex in Saturn's Children -- Freya's frequently penetrated, in every available orifice, by no end of robot devices -- even space-ships. It's no fête champêtre for her, though, as she's also frequently left in horrible places to die or lose multiple limbs. I was never afraid that she was going to die the final death (which reminds me, unavoidably of the Doctor Who spoof: The Curse of Fatal Death). After all, it's clear from the fact that she's telling these events, that she survived them -- but despite this, the pace was, for the most part, kept fast and entertainingly so.

For the most part. The extremely large amounts of travel worked because of Freya's often funny attitudes towards it, and the fact that she could go into slowtime and arrive several years later after four or five pages. Towards the end, though, the blend of mystery spy novel and cyberpunk got a bit confusing. Especially as, this being robots, after all, some characters ended up being two or three different people at once -- same names, different people (except in some cases where multiple personalities were developed...), with different agendas. In a normal cloak and dagger tale, it would be very obvious that the nasty janitor with the distinctive pox would be to blame. In Saturn's Children, it could, and probably is, anyone and everyone, and I found myself overwhelmed a bit towards the end.

Nevertheless, Charles Stross has created a good story in Saturn's Children. The muddled and confusing parts were more than balanced out by the extremely funny bits, and for once, instead of the cold, heartless efficiency of our robot overlords, I found myself caring for a robot who was more human than her dead Creators.

[I should point out here, as I didn't in my original review for the webjournal, The Book Swede, that I think Stross is something of an acquired taste; you'd be best to start on one of the "Laundry" books!]

Freya/Friday rules!

Charles Stross has gone on record as saying that this novel is not a homage to Heinlein but a continuation of his vision, the novel that Robert Anson Heinlein would have written if he was still with us. Having re-read Friday (the most obviously similar Heinlein novel)I say that Charlie has fulfilled that brief and much, much more. This book is a real rollercoaster, with action and plot twists that would daunt a James Bond, and enough solid science as a background to make the Creator-less universe hang plausibly together. For those that know Charles Stross' other work, such as Accelerando, the Laundry series, Halting State, Glasshouse etc, this book is yet another brilliantly new and engrossing read from a writer who delivers fresh, funny, frantic fiction seemingly on demand. Buy this book - you shouldn't be disappointed!

Many layered

Where to start in describing this book? There's such a lot in it. It's excellent to read, a really good story that keeps moving and springing surprises right to the end. More than anything, the plot is that of a good thriller, with allies, factions, betrayals, double and triple loyalties.

Freya is a robot, created for sex with her One True (human) Love. Inconveniently, the human race died out before she was manufactured, so she has to make her living as she can, avoiding falling into slavery to one of the creepy aristocrat robots, with everything made more complicated by her having internalized the identities of several of her robot siblings. Who themselves have internalized the identities of... etc. This makes for an intriguing - and sympathetic - central character, a truly human creation.

Nothing here though is as it seems, not even the ever helpful Jeeves Corporation, which has robot butlers on every planet or other inhabited rock, eager to please (while carrying on a secret mission). And "robot" itself is a tricky term - a dire insult in a post human world, where our synthetic replacements carry civilization on, still bound by the limitations and codes of behaviour built in by their Creators. One of the more intriguing aspects of the book is how Stross works through the implications of this - both in terms of the society it creates (a slave owning aristocracy) and of the ethics - or lack of them - that led to this. The central dilemma is, if we create robots, we want to be protected from them, don't we? So we make them obey us. So we make slaves. And as these robots are actually modelled on us - apparently we never found any other successful way of making an AI - we have, in essence, created human slaves...

All this, and a blizzard of cultural references, puns and in-jokes (one example: robot civilization is terrified of "pink" and "green" goo - animal or vegetable material created by criminals working in secret labs which, it is feared, could spread uncontrollably and cause ruin), dazzling technology so well explained and right that you just know that's how it should be done. Perfect, absolutely perfect.

Only one problem - and I hate to be picky - but I wanted more. The civilization described here is so well conceived, it could support a dozen more books. Please!