Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 Nothing sexy here, move along November 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This should have been a likable book; I certainly started it with high hopes. We've got spaceships, awesome technology, a fetching heroine who is in perpetual peril of assassination by mutant ninja dwarves, and I know Stross can write stories that keep me enthusiastically turning pages to find out what happens next. Yet, I had to force myself to finish this book; it wasn't completely horrible, but reading it was more of a chore than anything else.
What went wrong? Well, for starters, I think Stross had trouble handling the fundamental premise of the book: the whole human race has died out (apparently through some sort of oversight), and the entire solar system is now populated by nothing but robots--who keep on pretending to be the human-like servants of mankind. As you know if you've read any of the other reviews, this puts our heroine, Freya, pretty much out of work, as she was created to be a sex toy for humans.
Stross could have played this as satire. We know he can be funny and satirical; this is the guy who wrote Atrocity Archives, after all. But no, Saturn's Children is completely and unrelentingly serious. Unfortunately, this is a premise that is difficult to take seriously. Levity would have eased the suspension of disbelief; as it was, I had a hard time figuring out why all these robots cared about acting like humans. Worse, I found it difficult to care about the robots.
I started out wanting to like Freya. However, to like a character, I must be able to empathize with that character to some degree. I've read stories in which there were robot characters who I liked--but that liking depends on how human the author makes his "robot" seem to the reader. The problem with this book is that every time I thought I might be getting to like Freya, Stross goes out of his way to hit me over the head with a reminder that she's a machine: she leaks hydraulic fluid from certain orifices, sweats "silicone lubricant", or takes an acetone shower to get squeaky clean. To be blunt, Freya is about as likable--and as sexy--as a fork lift. And that makes the book hard to like, indeed.
 When Robots Run Themselves October 31, 2008
Stross is one of the newer hard-sf voices, and his previous books have shown a great inventiveness and a plethora of ideas and concepts that go well beyond what we've seen in the field before. This book, while firmly grounded in homage to some of the great early SF masters of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, is in many ways just as inventive as his earlier books.
The situation is a solar system populated entirely by robots; their creators, us poor humans, having given up the ghost a couple of centuries ago (exact means of our demise never explicitly stated), but in any case, humans have left the building. This situation alone is reminiscent of Simak's City, where the humans left en-masse for Jupiter, and left stewardship of Earth in the hands of robots. But unlike that story, here we have a vibrant society of robots, who only nominally follow Asimov's Three Laws, robots that have evolved various classes and a hierarchy based on power and money, complete with a method of completely enslaving a robot who has run out of funds.
The story follows Freya, a sexbot built to service the sexual needs of the now long-gone humans, and as such can find no purpose to her life. She has to make do with sex with other robots, which is simply not as satisfying. But the plot very quickly becomes very complicated, as Freya is hired to transport a certain illicit package to Mars (shades of Heinlein's Friday), and in doing so becomes involved in schemes and counter-schemes by those who are attempting to really control the entire solar system. During the course of delving into these schemes, we are treated to a grand tour of the Solar system, from Mercury all the way out to the Oort cloud, all thoroughly grounded in the best information currently available about conditions of each of Sol's family members.
In many ways, this book's message is about identity and just what makes a `person', as one of the capabilities these robots have is to record and exchange `soul-chips' with other robots of the same lineage. While this message is clear, it also leads to the major problem with this book. In its later stages it becomes very difficult to keep track of just who is who (schizophrenia runs rampant!), who the bad and good guys really are, and just what the ultimate purpose of each of the factions really is. Freya's character, which had been so carefully and well built up in the first half of this book, seems to get lost in all the multiple other personalities. Alongside of this is one other problem: the portrayed level of sexual attraction Freya feels for another robot who is extremely close to the model of their Creators (i.e., a human male), as I found it rather unbelievable that robots would be designed with such an overriding complex that it would subsume their normal rationality.
The ending was also a bit of a disappointment, with a bit too much of `all ends well' and `things will get better from now on', and too little resolution of some of the more complicated details of the various plot threads.
There's a fair amount of sex in this book, almost a given due to its premise, and while never extremely graphic, does include certain varieties that some might consider `kinky', and certainly makes this book unsuitable for younger people.
Inventive and scientifically solid, but eventually too complicated to really satisfy.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
 A different kind of post-human SF October 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Saturn's Children marks Stross's serious progression as a writer.
He's doing far more advanced tricks with plot and exposition than in his previous novels.
The way he drops in the back story, such that when the lead is called a "robot" you installing know it's like using the N-word.
Oh, yeah - what's this book about? It's a different kind of post-human novel; mainly because humanity has died off. But before they did so (and potentially _because_ they did so) they created a race of intelligent robots to help them colonise the solar-system.
Robots created to serve man, and left floundering when their masters are gone, but unable to stop the course they were on.
As Stross says: "when the last human died, human civilisation barely stopped from lunch".
There are robots of every shape, size and variety. And the way they 'connect' is hilarious! Some very interesting depictions of space docking.
It's a rollicking tale, but I kept pausing to admire Stross's prose style.
All I want now is a sequel!
edge of the envelope September 11, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Stross is an accomplished story teller in the space opera arena. This story is at the edge of what one finds in the traditional SiFi space
 Ignore the all the reviews posted by Americans September 8, 2008
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is one hell of an entertaining and thought provoking book. Again, the book is almost entirely centred on a female character - one Freya Nakamachi - Baroque and Renaissance musician, professional concubine and kick-arse cybernetic dame! (you gotta be interested after a resume like that!?) One of his best characters since Reeve in "Glasshouse" and Sue, the Lesbian Scottish cop in "Halting State".
The book is full of ideas and some challenging ones - like can we produce artificial intelligences similar to humans? Stross's answer is yes.
Don't read the reviews, especially all the crappy negatives ones, just buy it and enjoy a very good yarn!
I am kind of wondering if the people who made "Ghost In The Shell" might be interested in animating it. I think Charlie Stross would be down for it! Maybe someone could animate it and I could present the Renaissance and Baroque music for the soundtrack. Well, one day ....
Great stuff! Full marks to Charlie Stross!
PS: Buy the U.K. edition to avoid the cheese-cake cover.
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