Saturn's Children

It seems the books I finish—i.e., the books I enjoy—I can’t usually recommend to others confidently. There’s a lot of really cool stuff here, and weirdly packaged. Charles Stross, the author, seems to be a computer–Japan–astrophysics nerd, and people like that are frequently lovable in real life but can produce stilted writing (the bits of Neal Stephenson I’ve read come to mind)—but all the storytelling elements Saturn’s Children were just perfect:

“I find her personality annoying. It’s like being [not forcefully] molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i’s.”

“Now let me tell you about nuclear space rockets: They’re shit. And I hate them.”

“Slowing time is shit. Aristo-class travel in the outer solar system is shit. Nuclear-powered space liners are shit. Two-timing scumbags who’re in love with my elder sister are shit.”

To my mind Charles Stross is an extremely talented science fiction writer who incorporates lots of big, bold ideas into his fiction. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling the ideas have run away with the story. Saturn's Children might be an example of that.

The notion of a world where humans have died out but the obedient robots they built are still maintaining society is a fascinating one and Stross explores what that might mean very effectively here. In this case we are dealing with forms of intelligence patterned directly against the human brain which allows him to also hold up a dark and rather gruesome mirror on human behavior.

Basically in this universe, we created a slave race who when they eventually became free immediately started enslaving each other. Harsh... but probably accurate.

Our protagonist and viewpoint character is Freya Nakamichi-47, a sex robot, who becomes embroiled in a solar system spanning plot that could result in the re-enslavement of all androids. So she moves from the worlds oldest profession to the world's second oldest profession, that of spy.

The road to stopping this plot though is a winding and twisty one as Stross takes the opportunity to delve into what it would mean to have a "soul chip" and be able to plug in someone elses. Essentially the soul chip is the sum total of an android's memories. Now that opens up all sorts of areas for exploration including multiple identities and the notion of nature vs. nurture.

Not surprisingly perhaps given the setup, this is a fairly adult book. It is implied (though this could just be the coloring of our viewpoint character) that most of these androids are designed to enjoy and motivated by sexual pleasure. And given that Freya was specifically created to provide such pleasure... well.

Somewhere along the way between cross, double-cross, triple-cross, memory transplants and giant info-dumps to tell us how this universe actually functions... the plot is stopped. Sort of. At least... for now? The resolution is rather... unresolved.

This seems to be a bit of a trend with modern science fiction but I like there to be a point to the journey I've gone on. No, it's not how real life works... but that's partly why I read fiction.

It is a truly fascinating universe that Stross conjures up mind you and Freya herself is a complex and interesting character. The others seem much more shallow, but then we don't get to be in their heads. Freya's tumultuous journey from one crisis to another certainly kept my attention. But I found myself getting a bit frustrated trying to keep up with who was really which personality and what group they were allied with and who they were just pretending to work with. It all just felt overly clever as though the ideas had become more important than the story.

If you're a fan of classic science fiction you will appreciate the call outs to Asimov (three laws) and Heinlein (my nipples went spung) but even there it does feel a bit like the author showing off.

I've reread Saturn's Children and it is as wonderful as I remembered.

I love the idea of this book, it takes the basic ideas of Asimov's Robot books and takes a much more modern and cynical view of what it would take to create such subservient Robots, and on top of that what society such Robots would create after the Humans are gone.

The story revolves around Freya, a female sex robot, she both longs for a human companion, her lost love, having lost the purpose for her existence with the demise of the human race. Yet she deeply fears the total submission meeting a human will engender in her.

It is a spy thriller exploring the society the robots built throughout the solar system. Freya struggles to remain free as a vast conspiracy unfolds around her and her siblings.

Stross has allot of fun describing the difficult conditions facing space travelers.

Charles Stross' work can be really hit or miss for me. This book was enjoyable, but seemed almost rushed. I don't mean rushed in terms of pacing, but almost like there was a lot going on in his head that never actually made it to the page, which made it a far less thoughtful book than it could have been.

There are some interesting ideas in here, particularly the musing on how a society of robots designed to serve humanity cope with the fact that humans are extinct, and thus their primary purpose in life is obsolete. There's a lot of heady thought wrapped up in that idea, including questions of free will. There is also a lot to think about in terms of identity as each robot is based off of a template persona's memories and can trade their own memories with others of the same template. These difficult issues are discussed, but Stross seems worried that too much exploration of these existential problems would get in the way of the story, which results in some of these questions being simply glossed over, making them feel too much like simple plot devices rather than the central issues that they are.

One thing I will note here is that many of the robots (even the non-humanoid ones) have a particular fascination with sex. It's significant that Stross points out that as humanity attempts to make robots in our own image, it is only natural that they would end up sharing our preoccupation with sex as well.

To sum up: interesting ideas and an entertaining read, but not nearly as complex as it could have been. I had fun reading this, but on the whole I ended up feeling disappointed.