Saturn's Children
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4.1 • 91 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct, leaving only androids behind to fulfill humanity’s dreams. And, having learned well from their long-dead masters, they’ve established a hierarchical society—one with humanoid aristo rulers at the top and slave-chipped workers at the bottom, performing the lowly tasks all androids were originally created to do.
Designed as a concubine for a species that hasn’t existed for two hundred years, femmebot Freya Nakamichi-47—one of the last of her kind still functioning—accepts a job from a stranger to deliver a package from mercury to Mars. Unfortunately, she’s just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids desperate to retrieve the package’s contents…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller. In a far-future class-driven android society, most of the populace are slave-chipped and owned by wealthy "aristos." When low-caste but unenslaved android Freya offends an aristo and needs to get off-world, she takes a courier position with the mysterious Jeeves Corporation, but the job turns out to have dangers of its own. Designed as a pleasure-module, Freya isn't quite as obsolete as she could be, as androids have sex with each other incessantly. Hugo-winner Stross (Halting State) has a deep message of how android slavery recapitulates humanity's past mistakes, but he struggles to make it heard over the moans and gunshots. Readers nostalgic for the SF of the '60s will find much that's familiar (including Freya's jumpsuit-clad form on the cover), but that doesn't quite compensate for the flaws.
Customer Reviews
Post Human Space Opera Adventure
“Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross is subtitled “A Space Opera” and it lives up to this description. It’s also appropriately considered a post-human novel. This is in a literal sense, as the human race has went extinct well before the novel takes place.
The inheritors of the solar system are the various forms of artificial life that humanity created. These range from simple automata to complex androids with artificial intelligence modeled on human minds. This brings us to our protagonist, Freya. She is a complex human sized android model that was originally designed as a sex-bot. She was activated long after the humans she was designed for were all dead, so she and her siblings now try to make their way in a society that consists entirely of other forms of mechanical life.
Since this society was modeled on that of their deceased creators, it is intrinsically flawed. There are uber-rich aristos who have essentially enslaved 90% of the other beings. Freya is trying to retain her autonomy in this grim society. She takes a job as courier for the Jeeves Co., and then graduates to spying for them.
This is an exciting and adventurous novel, that literally spans the solar system. The action takes place from Mercury to transplutonian Eris. The beings of the future are relatable in spite of being inhuman. This novel explores sentience and self determination from different perspectives, and still manages to tell a great story in the process.
This is the first volume in a series of two books and a short story (so far) known as the Freyaverse. I’m now looking forward to reading the other novel, “Neptune’s Brood.”