Service Model
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3.9 • 22 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Task List Item No.1 – Become self-aware . . .
Meet CharlesTM, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault. That is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner.
Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master – therefore worthless in a society utterly reliant on artificial labour and services. Fleeing the household, he enters a wider world he never knew existed. Here an age-old human hierarchy is disintegrating into ruins, and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to its wellbeing is struggling to find a purpose.
Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He’s about to discover that sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?
Praise for Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘A joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human’ – Patrick Ness
‘Dizzyingly inventive’ – The Guardian
‘Tchaikovsky’s world-building is some of the best in modern sci-fi’ – New Scientist
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A robot servant goes rogue in this self-aware fable from Adrian Tchaikovsky. A winking satire of sci-fi tropes woven through a philosophical meditation on duty and identity, Service Model follows Charles, a loyal automaton who murders his master in a sudden fluke. From there, the robot strikes out into a world very different from the household that has provided the extent of his experience so far. Utterly unmoored now that he has rendered himself functionless, Charles discovers a wider society that long ago slipped out of the grasp of human caretaking. Tchaikovsky takes obvious relish in imagining the eccentric characters who inhabit this cheekily rendered dystopia, all while unspooling potential repercussions for our own tech-assisted lives. It’s also steeped in an intimate knowledge of popular science fiction, from Isaac Asimov to WALL-E. This might be Tchaikovsky’s most playfully accessible book to date.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this clever postapocalyptic adventure, Tchaikovsky (the Children of Time series) puts a pair of out-of-place survivors on a satirical journey to replace what they lost when human civilization collapsed around them. The Wonk hopes to identify robots who have become self-aware and with them build a new, better society. The other survivor, a sophisticated robot house servant redesignated as "Uncharles," wants to find a job. Even a simple employment quest is horribly complicated in an environment where repair facilities are scrap heaps in disguise due to robot overpopulation, dutiful robots fatalistically attempt to follow pointless instructions, and combat bots busily scavenge parts to perpetuate endless battles with each other. Tchaikovsky hangs a banner of tragedy over his stage, with Uncharles continually worried by the glitch that killed his owner and the Wonk increasingly disappointed in the search for a robot that thinks for itself (even one called "God" turns out to be running a program). What begins as a quest for justice, though, resolves into an appreciation of mercy as Uncharles and the Wonk lose their pasts but win a brighter future. With humor, heart, and hope balancing out the decay, this glimpse of the future is sure to win fans. This review has been updated for clarity.
