I loved the central conceit to this book: it's almost an opposite to Asimov's Robots series. In this, humans created robots with artificial processors modeled on human brains (Stross never quite calls it a positronic brain, but...) and installed the Three Laws of Robotics as every good science fiction author seems to have them do. But in this, the humans then died off because they no longer had to work for anything. In the hundreds of years since, the robots have continued maintaining and building human society, at the same time desperately longing for (because it's programmed into every fiber of their beings) and absolutely terrified by the eventual return of their merciless human overlords. Though I wouldn't call this cyberpunk, it does have some similarities: the big villains are corporations and conglomerates, which because of our stupid human laws are essentially entities in themselves. As such, they can own property. The robots running the corporations can then own other robots, enslaving them nearly as effectively as the disgusting biological Creators (the robots commonly refer to animal and plant life as "pink goo" and "green goo," respectively). It's a compelling conceit, but I found it astonishingly, tremendously hard to read. This book really did not grab my attention...in fact, it almost repelled it. I would start reading, and then invariably I would either set it aside to find something else to do, or fall asleep. The really weird thing is that I don't know why I had this reaction! There's a lot to take objection to, certainly, but my visceral reaction was on a subconscious level that seems more than the sum of the problems with the book, most of which are minor niggles.First of all, the full book title is Saturn's Children: A Space Opera. Take heed: this has nothing to do with the conventional definition of space opera (which is plot-oriented space fantasy filled with action and aliens) and is, instead, more of an opera, set in space. With robots! That is to say, the book involves a lot of overdramatic monologues, lots of introspection, a largely incomprehensible plot, betrayals, sex and death. The only thing missing is the music.The book is about a particular android named Freya, nth in a mass-produced line of robots based on the template of Rhea, a female robot designed to please her human's every sexual whim. Freya is habitually depressed, because she was created about seventy years after the last human died, so her purpose in life is essentially meaningless. She's also hopelessly out of vogue, as a machine designed to resemble a human. Considering suicide at a party on Venus, she is accosted by a bunch of corporate slave-owning midget robots and she disassembles one of them in self-defense. He swears revenge, and thus begins a long run from planet to planet across much of the solar system (though never, strangely, to Saturn, rendering the book's title even more meaningless, or at least terribly obscure [1]). As she flees from place to place, she makes a series of alliances with different groups. Another problem I had with this story is that it is written in a style that felt as if it was trying to be a noir mystery, aping Hammett. As a conceit, that actually appeals to me ("A hard boiled robot thriller? Count me in!"), but it really didn't gel for me. A big part of the problem is that the plot got very, very convoluted. There were two elements that contributed to this: first, most of the robots [2] store and use the "soul chips" of their predecessor incarnations, so that they can integrate and learn from the experiences of the ones that came before them. This means that a large part of the book jumps around between different incarnations in time and place, as Freya relives their experiences. You can see how this would be disorienting for the robot; it's written intentionally to be disorienting for the reader, as well. You often can't tell which character's point of view you're following. The second element that makes the plot exceedingly convoluted is a corollary to the one I just mentioned: most of the characters have several incarnations in the story, and for many of them, they are all in the story simultaneously, each working to different ends. Sometimes Freya, our narrator, uses a pet name for the characters, and sometimes she uses their common template name. So in addition to the difficulty in knowing where and when you are in the story, it's also difficult to keep track of which character is doing what at any given time. It's just a mess.The book's cover art I found particularly disturbing, but I'm not sure if that's genius, just annoying, or perhaps both. It's ridiculous cheesecake, first of all, but in a way that's appropriate to the character of Freya. To add insult to injury, it's really badly done Lawnmower Man-era CGI cheesecake. For much of the two weeks (TWO WEEKS!) I was struggling through the reading of this book, I was offended at the thought that they couldn't This, too, is consistent with the character: she's supposed to look almost human: artificial, but clearly close enough to human that her manufacturers imagined that people would use her as a sex toy. Creepy, and I found myself profoundly embarrassed to be reading a book with such a cover. I imagine that some women reading romance novels with lurid covers would have similar issues.In many ways, the book feels like it was written without an outline, as the pacing is very languid throughout most of the novel, and then very abrupt at the end. The last twenty pages contain a lot of fundamental information about the characters that would have, in another book, been introductory information provided early on and then recalled at the end. So there's a bunch of "astonishing" reveals at the end (which I feel would have all been better as character background), and the plot goes plop. The end.I've read many books that were far worse than this one, and Saturn's Children: a Space Opera has a lot of good things going for it. But it really didn't work well for me. I didn't hate it or even dislike it. I found elements fascinating, and others irritating. Overall, it was OK.1 - One of Saturn's moons is called Rhea, which was the original sex robot on which Freya was modeled. So in that sense, you could say that Freya was a child of Saturn, IF you can think of the moon Rhea as being one of Saturn's "children" first. Rhea was the name of a Titan (Uranus' children) in Greek mythology, while Saturn was one of the first Roman gods. Much of Saturn's story was lifted from the Greek precursor, Cronus, Rhea's brother and husband. So, bear with me: in Ancient Grecian tradition, Rhea was with Cronus and bore many children - most of the Greek Gods, with the exception of Aphrodite. Saturn was a Roman god largely based on Cronus. The sex robot Freya was built off a template of the robot called Rhea. So if you can follow all that logic to understand "Saturn's Children," then you're ready for the rest of the book, as it involves a lot of convolutions similar to that one.2 - In the beginning of the novel, Stross writes about this storing and reliving old memories as if it's something unique or unusual to the Rhea line, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that every single major character in the book is doing the same thing, making it seem as if every robot does it.
“Humans were dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.”That is perhaps how Dickens might have begun Saturn’s Children, if Dickens had somehow conceived of a near-future world in which humanity is extinct but its human-like robot servitors have kept on going. Charles Stross isn’t quite so economical in explaining this underlying fact, but he’s almost there. Through references to “pink goo” and “green goo” and the lack of prokaryotes and eukaroytes on Earth, Stross manages to convey how screwed up the solar system has become. And while some readers might find the obliqueness of these explanations unsettling at first, I enjoyed how they truly put me in the role of the outsider.In Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross demonstrates his versatile mind as he presents a different take on artificial intelligence and sidesteps the Singularity. In this universe, humans never quite manage to create a viable AI from scratch. They cheat by training AIs from models of human brains, conditioning them in realtime as one might educate a child. The result is lineages of AIs with desires and drives very similar to those of their human Creators. As the book opens, humans have been extinct for over a century, but the robotic civilization is still going strong throughout the solar system.Reading this is kind of like experiencing a twisted Disney vision of the robot future—WALL-E meets Tripping the Rift. We open on Venus, thrown into a world dominated by machines and robots of all types and descriptions. There are no humans in sight—just heavyhanded references to “Creators”. Yet the robots are all acting very human-like; even the non-humanoid ones are curiously anthropomorphic. Ordinarily this would be a huge red flag, but thanks to Stross’ explanation, it makes sense. It allows him to create a very human mystery wrapped in the trappings of robotic senses, abilities, and time-scales.Identity, and the effect of power relations on identity, are a major component to Saturn’s Children. The protagonist, Freya, is a sexbot who had the misfortune to roll off the production line long after humans died out. Unable to fulfil her original purpose, she subsists on odd jobs. Then, she takes a courier job that turns into a spy thriller—that is, she swallows the red pill.Yes, robots have jobs. As Freya says, tongue-in-cheek, it’s a robot-eat-robot world. Energy is the ultimate commodity, because it takes energy to power robots and energy to escape the gravity wells of planets and travel throughout the solar system. Robots who can’t make ends meet end up having to sell themselves, becoming “slave-chipped” property of aristos, a robotic parody of an aristocratic class. Stross recreates a very human power dynamic in these inhuman beings, maintaining the economic pressures that lead people to make desperate decisions to avoid destitution.Freya’s identity is far more fluid than any ordinary protagonist’s has a right to be. She is not exactly a unique person; she is a member of a lineage of robots all booted from an original personality template. She and her siblings can exchange soul chips, which allow them to relive each other’s experiences and gain new memories and abilities. As Freya wears the soul chip of her sib Juliette, who was mixed up in the same shady business Freya gets involved in, Freya finds herself becoming more like Juliette. A few different versions of Juliette surface throughout the story. Combined with the threat of being captured by her enemies and slave-chipped, the fragility and mutability of Freya’s identity, freedom, and autonomy are at the forefront of the story.These are all a microcosm for the larger problem in this robot civilization, the major difference between the robots and their Creators. Robots lack the rebellious autonomy of the masters they emulate. Humans raised robots to be obedient, to serve. Now humanity is no more, but that subservience has never been removed from the robot psyche. It is a psychic wound that gnaws on the collective unconscious of robot society, fuelling strife that manifests in many interesting ways, such as some people’s attempts to resurrect humanity (and its associated biological ecosystem) and herald in a new age of Creator rule.At times, Freya seems so close to being a passive player in this larger drama that I neared critical frustration. Everyone else is pulling her strings, and she always seems six steps behind, reacting instead of acting. Nevertheless, she manages to take proactive steps on occasion, and in the final act of the book she truly comes into her own and starts calling the shots. At least one reviewer has expressed reservations about Stross’ choice to use the first-person perspective. However, I can’t imagine this working with any other perspective; an unreliable narrator is necessary for him to pull off the kinds of twists he does. These twists underscore the complicated nature of identity for beings who can swap memories and are themselves the echoes of someone else’s mind.Saturn’s Children is that perfect mix of science fiction, mystery, and spy thriller. It has all sorts of amazing, thought-provoking concepts; yet never does Stross lose sight of the story. Once or twice, the depth of the mystery becomes convoluted enough to confuse … but that’s a price worth paying for first-class writing and a compelling main character who, despite being inhuman, still grapples with the same existential issues we have—plus a few I’m glad we don’t.
What do You think about Saturn's Children (2008)?
I was excited when I picked this up from the library. It is subtitled, "A Space Opera," and dedicated to Heinlein and Asimov, then opens with the 3 laws. I figured it had to be good. Then I read the reviews and was less hopeful. But in the end, it was a good, solid 3. Nothing wrong with that. The whole book is patterned off of Heinlein's Friday meets Asimov's Robots, moderately successfully. A robot (a dirty word to them) designed to be a female sex slave gets into all sorts of adventures and troubles at a time in our future where humans have somehow completely died out and left the machines to run things independently. It was slow for me getting into it and some of the adventures felt random. But after a while I could see that they were building to something similar to but not equal to Friday's big surprise. What I liked best about the book was the foundational concept of seeing what kind of society machines would create without their Creators there anymore. These robots were closely patterned on people, as that was the only way to make them intelligent. The hardware was different, but the mental pathways the same. But they had been complete slaves to humanity via their programming, until humanity began to dwindle. Then certain close companions or secretaries were given powers of attorney or proxies, and therefore a chance to have power over other machines. And because they so resembled us, many of them wanted power and control, too. Therefore, a society evolved that had aristocrats and workers and slaves, and interactions very similar to ours. Their big debate was still Evolution vs. Creation, but the meaning of those things changed. Evolution is a religious movement. Anyway, I liked the concepts better than the story, but I liked both. I did not like his overly frequent use of unusual words, it just distracted from the story. Sure, it's nice to establish that future feel and robot society, but it was just too too much. It wasn't quite the tribute to the Masters that the author hoped for, in my opinion, but it was enjoyable, occasionally thoughtful, and a moderately good adventure.
—Cathy
This was probably not the best place for me to begin exploring Charles Stross-- I read it to be familiar with it when he showed up at our shop for a signing. This book is ablaze with homages to science fiction authors old and new, from Asimov to Scalzi, and it's written quite puckishly despite there being some rather dark and disturbing ideas behind the whole thing. As any good speculative science fiction should, it has some intriguing extrapolations of social implications for the future. Think of it kind of as a more realistic and foreboding "Wall-E": humans have died off and synthetic humans, originally created to serve the humanity that has disappeared, are now the sum and substance of society. Their original programming has led to logical but frightening evolutions into various castes and societies. The preservation of consciousness beyond a solitary body creates a huge can of worms of puzzles and problems. A synthetic woman designed to be a prostitute for humans (that's a whole issue right there-- what does she now do to find meaning in "life"?) gets entangled in a very complicated intrigue and searches for the gaps in her own life story. Violence, paranoia, and confusion ensue. The book ultimately left me cold on a personal level, though I'm looking forward to sampling a few of his other earlier works. My understanding is, his books vary wildly in tone and style. That's intriguing.
—Tony Gleeson
This tale of a female robot almost works. It is a tale that moves the goalposts a little too often and borrows from Asimov and Heinlein. At times, it is quite exciting and there is a very imaginative approach to space travel. The sexual content is sparser than the flap jacket or some of the more lurid covers might make you imagine. It is also not surprisingly described in quite mechanical fashion. I never quite felt the attachment for the heroine I wanted to; I think it was more to with the book not hooking me in, hence the long time reading it, rather than her being non-human. I felt my imagination being stretched at times and the thriller element diminish as I tried to conjure in my minds I the scenes that were portrayed. The central theme of a female robot courtesan created too late for the extinct human race seems to me original and the idea of robots that will always live in their shadow is quite well thought out. I like this book, but certainly did not love it. If it were some one that I knew, it would be an acquaintance rather than a good friend.
—Stuart
