Annalee Newitz: Autonomous (2017, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)
English language
Published June 10, 2017 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
When anything can be owned, how can we be free
Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.
Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack’s drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand.
And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?
pharma pirate roaming the Arctic. Bots having orgasms. Meditations on love, freedom, consciousness, and agency. Great story, great characters. I'm glad Newitz is delving more into the Terraformers world, but I want more stories about Med, Jack, Threezed, Elias, Paladin. Any or all.
Content warning Spoiler für die Sex-mit-Abhängigen Storyline
Ich hätte nicht so lange warten sollen, jetzt erinnere ich mich gar nicht mehr an so viel aus dem Buch, primär an das Gefühl der Enttäuschung. Ich hatte das Gefühl, dass kaum, dass die Story langsam begann, an Komplexität zu gewinnen, schon wieder Schluss war. Somit blieb alles irgendwie oberflächlich. An anderer Stelle, wie als Leute aus Nostalgie Club Mate trinken, die immer noch bescheiden schmeckt, fühlte ich mich peinlich berührt. Da versuchte Newitz zu sehr cool oder ironisch zu sein, doch der Effekt war mehr Anbiederung.
Die Charaktere blieben für mich leider flach, das Worldbuilding auch, weshalb ich den Hype um das Buch wirklich nicht verstehe. Aber gut, es ist ein Erstlingswerk, vielleicht sind die Folgebücher ja "runder".
In einem Kommentar schrieb ich bereits, was mich an dem Buch sehr störte, dass die 50jährige Protagonistin mit dem von ihr abhängigen ~20Jährigen ins Bett geht. Immerhin ging das Thema nicht gänzlich sang- und klanglos unter, wie in so vielen Stories, in denen alte Typen Beziehungen mit von ihnen abhängigen jungen Frauen haben: An einer Stelle kommentiert der Jüngling immerhin, dass es wohl immer so sein wird, dass die Machthabenden ihre Untergebenen sexuell ausnutzen. Hmm, da wäre mE mehr gegangen, aber immerhin wurde ihr Verhalten so kontextualisiert.
Generell sind die Beziehungen in dem Buch aber weird, auch die Roboter/Vorgesetzter-Geschichte ist irgendwie icky und gleichzeitig nicht überzeugend.
Alles in allem einfach nicht mein Buch, ich werde wohl mal in ein anderes von Newitz reinschauen und hoffen, dass consent-what-consent kein durchgehendes Leitmotiv wurde.
Hard to believe this book is six years old; the author works a lot of very relatable and still timely concerns into her characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the themes of interconnectedness and corporatism, and the characters' searches for meanings and identities all converging was reminiscent of The Wizard Of Oz. I enjoyed the senses of urgency and purpose, and appreciated how the author described intimacy (always difficult to convey in a pleasing way). This work could make an excellent film, and I hope the author continues to create many similar worlds for us to enjoy.
Of course an author has less say on the cover blurbs of a book, but I don't consider this book the Neuromancer of biotech and AI. For me it's about a balance of autonomy and conformance, and where your balance as an individual is centred. The mix of absolutes and different perspectives makes it worth reading, although somehow the characters can feel a bit shallow, just missing some depth. For me some of the instant click with the main characters is missing, but this builds up over time.
Fascinating sci-fi that discusses Artificial Intelligence, bio-hacking, patents, human-bot relationships, and piracy. It had that Asimov’s feel making me wonder about robots programming and how they could develop consciousness and feelings. I felt empathy for all the characters even the evil ones! Although there’s no good versus evil. It’s more like everybody’s doing what they believe is right and the arguments are all valid.
why does the 50 year old woman MC call a 20 year old asian man who she clearly thinks of as a kid as looking like a "yaoi character? and then having sex with him despite acknowledging that this was inappropriate but a big deal doesn't seem to have ever been made of it? also, less importantly, why the ridiculous "pulled some 420 out of her pocket" how-do-you-do-fellow-kids shit?
Fun action packed story, lots happening, but also a very dark dystopia. The way tech is woven into the story is really interesting, well researched and full of accurate little details. The structure of the story is cool, with the two main focal characters in direct opposition. It creates empathy with the "villains" - who have a very weird plot.
The first 100 pages of this had me hooked, but then it all fell apart. The plot was boring, the writing grew really procedural and stale, and the Jack/Threezed half of the narrative didn’t hold up to the first few sections about Eliasz and Paladin. I appreciated the book’s themes and message about autonomy, but… lukewarm at best.
While I enjoyed the story — and don't regret reading this at all — I had an incredibly hard time rooting for the agents. Also, I know the story takes place in a dystopian future, but slavery makes a comeback?! 🤢 Woof.
I, too, would fuck the robot
Wow this was amazing. One of the best books I have read this year.
So this story follows Jack, a pharma pirate who is being chased down by the company she pirated drugs from after dumping a load of an exact copy of a new drug called Zacuity on the market causing a lot of people to die from a flaw in the drug which causes extreme addition to work.
She runs around the world trying to create a fix for the addition, and tries not to get killed by the agents that are trying to stop her. She's Bi (yay!) and pretty cool.
Half the story focuses on Jack and her cadre of friends who help her achieve this, and the other half on the agents, Eliasz and Paladin who're chasing her.
Some context. In this universe AIs are real in the form of (mostly) humaniod robots. Robots are …
Wow this was amazing. One of the best books I have read this year.
So this story follows Jack, a pharma pirate who is being chased down by the company she pirated drugs from after dumping a load of an exact copy of a new drug called Zacuity on the market causing a lot of people to die from a flaw in the drug which causes extreme addition to work.
She runs around the world trying to create a fix for the addition, and tries not to get killed by the agents that are trying to stop her. She's Bi (yay!) and pretty cool.
Half the story focuses on Jack and her cadre of friends who help her achieve this, and the other half on the agents, Eliasz and Paladin who're chasing her.
Some context. In this universe AIs are real in the form of (mostly) humaniod robots. Robots are indentured because people where like, erm, I built this, so I should own it. Some smart ass pointed out that well children are made too, so shouldn't we be able to own people? From this we get a world with real AIs and indentured everybody.
Jack is human, and she has a sidekick who was an indentured slave until Jack killed their owner. Of the agents one of them is human (Eliasz), the other is an AI (Paladin).
This brings us to the major themes of this book. Slavery, and Identity.
On the Jack side of things we have the exploration that jack saving her her sidekick doesn't mean anything unless they are able to financially support themselves, and get normal jobs etc
On the agent side of things we have an exploration of what it means to be in a broken relationship, that is the only thing you have known, and the difference between what gender means to yourself vs what it means to other people.
The AI agent Paladin is genderless technically, and uses He/Him pronouns by default at the start, and after thinking about it by prompting by their team member switches to She/Her.
The relationship between the two agents is very broken. Eliasz has a massive internalised homophobia problem, being terrified at being attracted to Paladin at first, until he discovers her brain was originally belonged to a woman. This is in itself not unheard story to how many straight people react when being attracted to trans people, what is different is that Paladin's mind is for about half this book being forced to be attracted to Eliasz by a series of programs.
Later on this is removed and we get an analysis of if she is actually attracted to Eliasz, ultimately she decides that she is, as every time he's away on missions, she misses him. I do wonder though if she had known anything other than this relationship how she would have felt.
Maybe there will be a sequel that explores this.
Interestingly we DO know she is totally fine with she/her pronouns. However it is explored a bit that she really doesn't care either way and that's a human thing.
The book ends (of course) with Jack getting away and releasing a cure, the two agents going to mars to love each other in peace (with the AI getting their autonomy). Which is kinda odd because you'd think that Paladin wouldn''t be terribly cool with going with someone who has fucked with their mind.
This is a difficult review to write. Autonomous is a very well written and smart book. This book presented many ideas that made me question some of my own opinions and how we are steering the future. This is a book I will be recommending to many people based on that.
Unfortunately, I just didn't enjoy the story. I feel that this book is so important though that I still gave it 4 stars.
I am a touch disappointed by this book. I was looking forward to reading it, especially considering the praise received from [a:William Gibson|9226|William Gibson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1373826214p2/9226.jpg] and [a:Neal Stephenson|545|Neal Stephenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430920344p2/545.jpg]. It simply did not live up to my expectations.
The overall story is good, the characters are good, and it raises some good questions.
