Since several other reviewers have already described the overall plot and the main themes of this book - what does it mean to be a person, what does it mean to be free vs.

I don't do that often, since my eyeballs are heavily subscribed.Īnd I think I'm going to go back a third time. I had the great good luck to obtain an advance copy, and after I had read it once, I went back and re-read it to pick up on all the neat bits, both story and philosophy, that I missed on the first 'gosh-wow' read through. Just as in his last book, 'Halting State', it's the hidden infrastructure that's important, and it ends up involving Asimov's unstated Fourth Law of Robotics (Any sufficiently complex intelligence will end up doing what it damn well pleases, first three laws notwithstanding.), the ethics of interpersonal relations, and the ultimate question of 'Just what do you mean by a person?' For that part alone, this story is worth the trip.īut this book is by no means as simple as the above summary suggests. On the surface, this book is a really fun romp, as Freya's viewpoint effectively takes her on a Grand Tour of the solar system, from Venus to Mercury to Mars and outward to the Oort Cloud, seeing, meeting, fighting and sexing her way through the many variants that will be possible once the physical housing for intelligence becomes as malleable as technology and function allow. However, her situation is pure 1950's Heinlein juvenile, wherein Our Heroine is in Great Peril and must Find Out What's Really Going On. The heroine, Freya, is a sexbot (hence the late period, where Heinlein's characters actually were interested in sex). If the title of this review sounds confusing, it's because I have a lot of trouble putting this book into any fixed category. And now our heirs squabble, in fashions just as ugly as we their Creators did. But they've been realized by our successors, the robots, not by living humans, who are extinct. Welcome to a future in which all the dreams of the 1950's have been realized: exploring the solar system, extraterrestrial colonies all the way out to the Oort Cloud, fast-transit spaceships, etc.

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross