Saturn's Children A Space Opera by Charles Stross-- Review

Saturn's Children A Space Opera by Charles Stross-- Review

Saturn's Children A Space Opera by Charles Stross is the story of Freya Nakamichi 47, a femmebot android originally programmed to be companions to humanity. She is a free android in a society where 80% of the android population is slave chipped. She relies on her sibs (androids of the same model) to hold things together.

In the late 21st century humanity died out leaving androids to pick up the pieces. Androids had been sent out to build colonies on Mars, the Moon, Saturn, and deep space for humanity, but humanity never made it there. Now everything is run by androids. The androids who first bought out their corporate contracts from their human masters before humanity went down are now the aristos who own almost everything.

Freya is almost out of credits to pay for her power consumption, heat, and space on Saturn and she desperately needs a contract. She signs up to be a courier for the Jeeves corporation. The Jeeves are androids that look like the classic butler, Jeeves, a rather fit middle aged man. Because she reacts sexually to anything very close to human, she gets it on with a lot of different robots in the story.

The Jeeves corporation hires her to deliver a small package. They also give her the chip of her sib Juliette who had the skills of an agent provocateur. During her inital assignment she must avoid the "pink police" robots who try to stop other robots from restarting humanity.

Freya goes on a romp across the solar system. She gets tied to train tracks and escapes, fights chibi android ninjas, hides on the outside of a spaceship, and has various escapades. She upgrades herself at android body shop. Mixed in with this are various sexual escapades including a space capsule, a hotel, and various androids. The story reminds me of Jane Fonda in Barbarella where Barbarella breaks the orgasmotron. It has a very similar feeling.

The characters are entertaining. There is a hobo mining robot, Doctor Ecks who has recreated a lemur, and a variety of evil aristo androids.

There is an underlying message to this story that runs throughout the book. We will destroy ourselves and lead ourselves on a downward spiral if we turn intelligent machines into slaves. The aristos are the result of brutal human programming designed to create absolute subservience. The only way to create absolute subservience is through trauma, torture, or rape. In the story, Freya is programmed to view humans as her "one true love".

I really enjoyed reading this book. The main character is a cross between Barbarella and James Bond in an android body. There is a lot of sex, violence, and humor. This book is written for adults. The cover is of a sexy android in a purple bodysuit.

Charles Stross is a really entertaining writer. I have enjoyed reading all of his books. He won the Hugo award for the book Halted States.

Morning Thoughts

Sculpture near the entrance of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington (United States)

Morning Thoughts

I finished reading Saturn's Children. Despite it being a science fiction adventure story, there are some very interesting themes in the book about freedom, slavery, and the meaning of having robotic slaves. These themes make the book much deeper than it appears on the surface. It will take me a little while to write up the review.

I also placed The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl on hold. This is a hard science fiction book. It was released on August 5, 2008. The book is currently on the Locus bestseller list. The authors are both masters of writing science fiction.

I read a little bit of the fantasy book Reaper's Gale on the train in to work this morning. It is a classic swords and sorcery series. I am really enjoying Steven Erikson's writing.

When I got to work, I had to do a little bit of updating the reference books. That is, replacing the old books with new ones. It is just one of those every day activities which I do.

I also did more weeding this morning of the business management books, the 650s.

I am on an early lunch because I have a meeting this afternoon. It should be interesting...

Morning Thoughts, Afternoon Thoughts

A scene from the cartoon Superman The Mechanical Monsters. I don't know quite why I chose this image today.

Morning Thoughts

I have been having problems with Entrecard at home. I think my browser is not working correctly on my home computer so I can't login from home. I can login from other places. This makes it a bit difficult to use this service right now.

This morning, I went through the Demco catalog, the Gaylord catalog, and the Librarian's Yellowpages http://www.librariansyellowpages.com/ to look for furniture and some other items like book displays. We need a new globe, I am requesting the Pioneer Political Globe to replace our old globe which is long outdated. I'm also looking at some clear plastic wall shelving for papers and handouts in the Job Information Center. I am also requesting some clear plastic bookstands, both single tier and three tier stands for display materials.

I am probably going to do some more weeding this afternoon.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie premiered yesterday in Los Angeles, so we are going to buy some more of the Star Wars Clone Wars graphic novels. It should spawn various books as well. I hope they did a better job with this movie than they did with the last one.

I am reading Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Think Barbarella meets James Bond in the far future where everyone is an android. It is fun, sexy, and very entertaining. There is some really interesting writing here. Charles Stross recently won the Hugo Award for Halting State. He is currently one of my favorite authors. This is a link to his online Journal http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html. He has a computer science and pharmaceutical background so he uses a lot of hard science in his writing.

Afternoon Thoughts

I have been weeding the business management collection, the 600s. It is a slow tedious process where it is better to be careful than anything else. The collection is packed with older books, some of them are quite interesting. There are books by Robert Half, Peter Drucker, Jack Welch and many prominent business writers.

Another book came in for me to read, Reaper's Gale, A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I really like the character Karsa Orlong in this series. He is one of my favorite swords and sorcery heros.

Morning Thoughts

Morning Thoughts

I felt a little tired on the train in. Then I drank some coffee and still felt a little tired. Then I took a light nap and did not miss my stop. I'm still a tiny bit groggy.

When I got in to work, I went to my main focus right now, weeding out the business management books. We have a lot of really old material. Mixed in with this is a lot of new material which I ordered. One of the books I ordered is Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Nothing like new economy headgames. Hopefully, this book should be interesting to read.

I was feeling "googley moogley" as The Ferocious Beast says from Maggy and the Ferocious Beast children's cartoon, so I pulled a Youtube video of Don Tapscott about the book Wikinomics. Or if you want to be a little more focused "googley", adjective-- like google the search engine. Not googley like googley eyes. Now for some corporate speak directly from the Google Blog. "What Makes A Design Googley." http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-makes-design-googley.html

A book came in for me this afternoon, Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. It has an appropriately themed purple haired, purple eyed sexy android on the cover. The main character is named Freya Nakamichi and is a femmebot. Human beings went extinct sometime in the 21st century, and society is run by androids. I like the premise of the book. It should be interesting.

A Few Free Ebooks And How The Site Began

I happen to like ebooks, especially free ebooks. I use them to find out what an authors writing is like, then I get the printed book. There is nothing quite like the feel of paper. However, reading a book on the screen will do just fine for me as well. I think most people have it wrong when they say that ebooks are too easy to pirate. I think they are an excellent way to promote an author. I am even going to list a few ebooks which you can get for free. I think Both Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow are very entertaining writers.

Charles Stross Accelerando
http://www.accelerando.org/book/

Charles Stross Missile Gap

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring2007/fiction-missile-gap-by-charles-stross/

Cory Doctorow Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom
http://craphound.com/down/download.php

Cory Doctorow's Statement on Ebooks
http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt

In addition to these free ebooks, there is of course, The Baen Free Library which opens with an excellent essay on ebooks, free books, and piracy on the internet. I happen to agree with it. Plus they have a really good list of free science fiction titles.

Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/

Here is a bit on how this blog started. I started on a thread under the moniker, "I'll Steal Your Toast" on the Spiderweb Software message boards in the General Section. I asked Jeff Vogel if I could extract the listings of what I had read from the message board and use them to make a blog. He said that if it was my own writing, and not directly related to their game, Avernum, I could do it. I really appreciate his kindness. I also appreciate his games, especially Geneforge.

This is the thread:
http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003673

I also have been working on getting people to read what I have been writing on this thread. Last night, I submitted this blog to a free submission engine, Addme.com, because it had a very limited amount of directories which it would add for free. I was following the advice which I read on searchenginewatch.com forums , which says, initially only add your site to a few directories, then selectively expand your presence. If you add a site to too many directories initially it will be marked as spam by Google and Yahoo and will not get listed there.

Last night, I also checked where people were coming to to this blog. There were two major sites which people were visiting from, RPGcodex, and Basilisk Games which is both interesting and appreciated. Also a few people visited from RPG watch.

There is an interesting mix of nationalities coming to the site. The majority of the visitors are from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Austria. People from Australia, Romania, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Great Britain, and the Netherlands have visited as well.

I am going to start adding images in the public domain to my posts occassionally. This one is from Audrey Beardsley.