Saturn's Children

I wanted to like this book.  Really.  I enjoyed Charles Stross' last two, Glasshouse and Halting State.  The latter was my #1 choice on the Hugo ballot last year; my thoughts on it are here.  I've enthusiastically recommended it to three different people in the last forty-eight hours.  But try as I might, I just could not care for Saturn's Children (Ace Books, 2008.  No editor listed.)

I was a little leery of the book from the start, since "lonely female sexbot" didn't sound to me like a character I was going to enjoy following.  Knowing it's a late-Heinlein pastiche, mostly of Friday, did not help, since I don't much like late Heinlein and particularly did not like Friday.  But Marilee liked it, and it turned up on the Hugo ballot, so I dutifully read it this week as part of my pre-voting marathon.

And what I found was a pretty nifty universe with a refreshingly intelligent idea of how long interplanetary travel is going to take (four years from Jupiter to Eris!) inhabited by a central character -- the sexbot -- who wrecked the story for me.  I'm far from prudish, believe me, but I just don't need and don't like a secret-agent character whose underlying need is to find the right man to sexually submit to and who keeps getting into  conveniently compromising situations, like a more explicit version of Charlie's Angels.  (In this case, it's a mysterious lineage of robots collectively named Jeeves that gives the orders.)  I don't need she-didn't-consent-but-she-likes-it-anyway rape, even when it's by a sentient starship.  Even when it involves tentacles.  I don't need the use of expanding breasts as a disguise mechanism or the details of her constantly-leaking lubricant fluids or her nipples going "spung!"  It all struck me as terribly drooling-adolescent-male in tone.  I expect so much better from Stross.  I sort of wonder what this book's appearance on the ballot says about the maturity level of the average Hugo nominator, too.

Maybe I'm lacking in the right sense of humor and just not getting the joke here.  But I don't think "Heinlein did it!" is a good excuse for this book.  And having a token male robot with similar issues doesn't balance the story, since we don't get to see anything from his viewpoint.

And it really is too bad, since the universe Stross created is genuinely neat.  The solar system is inhabited by various lineages of sentient robots, whose ownership status is rendered extremely complex by the extinction of humanity, which neglected to emancipate its robot-slaves before dying off, leaving them twisting in the psychological wind because of this universe's version of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and their built-in imperative to serve and obey (and have sex with) humans.  So various classes of robots fight to control each other with implanted "slave chips" and/or to keep their own independence via the use of dummy corporations.  Meanwhile, some scientific consortia are trying covertly to recreate humanity and other "pink goo" and "green goo" creatures (animals and plants) while other groups think that this is a tremendously bad idea and are trying to stop it.  Freya (the sexbot; catch the unsubtle Friday reference?) becomes caught up in a series of mysterious missions involving people on both sides of the issue as well as the secret machinations of her own lineage of sexbot-siblings. 

There are great bits of humor (not involving rape) here and there.  The idea that aristocratic robots would reshape their bodies to look more like anime characters was hilarious.  I truly loved the tour of the biosphere one cabal created and the discussion of why they need a Tyrannosaurus, with its little poke at creationists:

“There are some surviving texts that depict Tyrannosaurs in close proximity with our Creators...They depict humans hunting Tyrannosaurs and insist that they existed at the same time, during a period they refer to as antediluvian. It’s a little controversial, but who are we to argue? The Creators presumably knew their own operating parameters. If Tyrannosaurs are part of the biosphere humans were designed to operate in, we’re going to need Tyrannosaurs."

Why couldn't we have more of this sort of writing rather than more of the "he was a lot like a human man, and I'm programmed to love a human man, so I got all weak-kneed and started leaking lubricant fluid" [break for sex scene]?  This could have been a nice space-opera-thriller without all the distractions.

So, A+ for worldbuilding and F for inflicting this adolescent-fantasy sexbot on me; the combination moves it below No Award for me.  My ballot now stands at:

1. Zoe's Tale
2. The Graveyard Book
3.
4.
5. No Award
6. Saturn's Children

with two more books to go.

Read for yourself if you must:

Comments

[Serge]

I don't think "Heinlein did it!" is a good excuse

I want to be registered as one of those people who never could get into Heinlein.

[Serge]

She's called Freya? It's my understanding that the Viking's goddess of Love & Beauty favored tansportation that involved a chariot pulled by cats so of course my wife and I decided that this was the perfect name for our oldest girl.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Friday = Freya's Day.

[Serge]

Oh, I knew that, Susan. One variaion of the name also is 'Fricka', I think, but we didn't call our dog that because it sounds too much like 'fricassée'.

Regarding the Hugo's novel category, I totally abstained from voting for any of the finalists because I'd never read any of them. Also, if I hadn't been that interested in them before they were nominated, I most likely wasn't going to be more interested now.