Service Model

Shares best book of the year with R. Sheckley's novella about a dude who won the all expense paid trip across the Universe.

Charles, a robot valet, unexpectedly murders his employer. He then sets out on a journey to Diagnostics to find out why he did it, and starts a heroes journey of sorts. Through seven episodes, mostly accompanied by the Wonk, who he meets at Diagnostics, he journeys through a societal landscape where humans are mostly dead or scrabbling to survive.

So what happened? The Wonk wants it to be that robots have obtained self-awareness. Charles just wants to be a valet for a human, but is complex enough to act unhappily at some of his opportunities. Even though he claims to be incapable of unhappiness.

I found myself really liking Charles, but that may be my internal tendency toward the satisfaction of ticking off tasks on a task list, which is what a lot of Charles' internal monologue is about. The overall story is good, but it is overly long (7 episodes in Charles' quest) and I just wanted to get on with it in a few places.

I don't think I've ever read a book where the protagonist is so indifferent to his own survival. Fortunately luck, good timing and The Wonk conspire to keep Uncharles, valet robot, going. He just wants to arrange someone's wardrobe and travel plans but ends up on an epic journey through a collapsed society. I laughed out loud several times.

Insightful - but maybe a smidge less insightful than it seems to think of itself. I enjoyed this read; each moment of Uncharles's journey is clearly supposed to shine a light on a specific part of human society in a way that felt a little too blatant to me. But the conclusion was incredibly satisfying and brought the whole thing together well. I highly recommend this book!

I haven’t previously read anything by this author. I gather Service Model isn’t his usual style. From the blurb, it looked to be an intriguing combination of dystopian adventure and comedy of manners.

I think my first impression was fairly accurate. We have UnCharles as the sole viewpoint character trying to understand and interact with the world within the (sort of) constraints of his programming, instead of limited by social conventions. We follow him and The Wonk on a journey that satirises several well known literary works. (Or maybe parodies? I never remember what the terms mean...) I’m only passingly familiar with those, so I may not have appreciated all the references.

In terms of plot, the structure wasn’t your standard sci-fi adventure. I’d say UnCharles was a traveller experiencing different showcased environments in a scripted way, rather than a robot on a mission, even if that’s what he was trying to be. I think the focus was more on social commentary than on plot.

UnCharles undertakes explicit evaluation and decision-making regarding his experiences and actions. While I could understand the reasons this was spelled out on page, especially during his interactions with other robots, it did make the reading slow. This was especially so in the first couple of sections. There were also several comments along the lines of  (paraphrased) “if UnCharles had been human, he would have felt ("specific named emotion") but since he wasn’t, he didn’t” which felt clunky.

Overall, an interesting mash-up of road trip and social commentary.

I thank the publisher for a free copy of this Hugo-shortlisted novel. This is my honest review.

Because its satire and its supposed to be a little dark, the balance needs to be just right. For me the humor wasn't quite landing which left the darker parts dominating my impression of the book. The humor / satire wasn't bad it just wasn't quite hitting from me. It felt a bit like watch something funny in your second language where you can appreciate the joke but the layer of indirection means that you don't quite feel it.

I could easily see myself loving this book if I read it at a different time or in a different head space.

The somewhat satirical tale of Uncharles, a robot programmed as valet traveling across a collapsing, nearly post-human society, after the death of its master.

Very reminiscent of a lot of 50s and early 60s sci-fi, in that it uses bits of the apocalypse setting to satirize modern scoeity. It's pleasant, but somewhat unchallenging. Good as a lighter read.

Reminiscent of Monk and Robot though broader and darker, we're along for a calm inquisitive road novel with an earnest robot butler some moment after the world as they and we know it ended. Satirically enjoys itself in upending formulaic scenes and takes us to some imaginative places, surprisingly light fun.

Truly a perfect fun-house mirror to our future, present, and recent past. A thoughtful, precise, inspiring knife to the gut which Tchaikovsky twists with unparalleled empathy and insight.

A story of a robot who does not fully understand his own actions, and does not consciously believe in his own agency. A series of trials like Old Mebbeth's tasks each point a glowing and uncomfortable finger at one of the ways our society is utterly failing. Pinocchio on a modern odyssey of apocalyptic parables silently screaming at the top of their lungs to do something about what's wrong. Truly more Literature in here than I can shake a stick at. Sublime, beautiful, and painful to the core.

Unquestionably going to come back to this several times, hopefully with a book club where we can study one section in depth before moving to the next. An absolute banger.

This book starts with a bunch of absurd humor, and as the story goes on, that humor gets mixed in with the darkness of the dystopian setting and overall plot. It kind of resembles Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls, but whereas that book was more adventure, this one is more dark comedy.

Tchaikovsky does manage to pull off the combination well. The main character, being a robot, brings a bunch of robotic aloofness to the narration, which actually works pretty well with the overall mixture of simultaneously aloof and dark tone of the book. While the main character keeps encountering perhaps too-poignant and neatly tied up episodes of his adventure, like the hero in some sort of a fable (which is where the comparison to Cage of Souls comes to mind), the character is sufficiently compelling to carry the book forward.

The conclusion to the overall plot could perhaps be more satisfying; it, too, tries to be rather poignant. The setting could perhaps be more fleshed out and less fable-like, but it works with the structure of the story.

This book reads to me as satirical Gulliver's Travels style book with a task-following robotic protagonist, but leaning more towards social commentary than political. However, I have such mixed feelings about it. Even if I agree with the book's messages about wealth disparity, meaningless jobs, and how systems need kindness, the length of the book overstays its welcome and the didactic ending feels heavy handed.

Some of its travel destinations felt repetitive by the end, and in my opinion a number could have been edited out without the book losing much at all. (If I were to make these edits, I personally would have trimmed out Decommissioning, the Library, Ubot; oh, and also, some of God's employment opportunities, as I feel like the Jul@#!% scene covers that just as effectively.)