Saturn's Children

May 12, 2008
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.

July 15, 2008
After the extinction of the human race in the 23rd century, robots and androids continue to function, forming their own stratified society to carry out their creators' dreams of space colonization. Freya Nakamichi 47a femmebot designed as a concubine for a race that no longer existsoccupies a place in society midway between the elite Aristos and the slave-chipped worker robots. Having to make her own way, she accepts a commission to deliver a small package from Mercury to Mars, unaware of the trouble that awaits her as humanoid factions vie for the contents of the package. The author of "Singularity Sky" and "The Atrocity Archives" always brings a fresh perspective to the genre, reinventing the future in bold new ways. Part space opera, part homage to late sf Grand Masters Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, this tale of a very "human" android belongs in most sf collections.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2008
In the preamble to his latest far-reaching novel, Stross invokes Asimovs famous three laws of robotics, including the one that says robots are forbidden to harm their human masters. The problem here is that there are no more humans left to harm; they became extinct sometime in the twenty-third century. Hundreds of years on, the civilization that spans the solar system and beyond consists entirely of sophisticated androids, one of whom (the narrator) is struggling to make ends meet. With her usual patrons long dead, femmebot Freya Nakamichi must pick up work wherever she finds it. When a run-in with a vengeful android aristocrat forces her to flee a Venus resort, she grabs the first gig available: ferrying a mysterious package between Mercury and Mars. Unfortunately, many dangerous and powerful androids are also eager to pilfer the package, and the price of securing it may be Freyas own identity. Stross takes a plot device common to mystery novels and turns it into one of the most stylishly imaginative robot tales ever penned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)