Saturn's Children

Saturn's Children (Freyaverse #1)

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3.47 of 5 stars 3.47  ·  rating details  ·  2,516 ratings  ·  277 reviews
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct�leaving only androids behind. Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some ve...more
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published July 1st 2008 by Ace (first published 2008)
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Community Reviews

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mark monday
the ideas behind the theme What Makes a Slave a Slave are particularly interesting when considering how they are approached and transformed by the genre in which they appear. in fantasy and historical fiction, slavery is often depicted as a regular part of the environment, and if a central character is enslaved, it is merely an obstacle that is usually surmounted. in horror, the idea of a total loss of freedom, especially the loss of an individualized mind, becomes another facet of evil: possess...more
Matt
Apr 04, 2011 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Experienced readers and lovers of science fiction
Recommended to Matt by: Glenn
Shelves: science-fiction
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Terence
Nov 23, 2008 Terence rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Charles Stross fans/Hard SF/Space Opera types
Shelves: sf-fantasy
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
C.S.
I am always all over the place with Stross. He is a gifted writer and can really put a story together but sometimes his books just don't knock me out.

This book was good but I admit that I was expecting more and it wasn't nearly as clever as I think it was suppose to be. I will continue to read Stross but I have a feeling he is going to always be one of those writers that just completely wows me or is just all right.
Kelly
I loved this book.

I sometimes have a hard time reading Charles Stross. I enjoy his concepts but I don’t often feel empathy for his characters. I adored Freya, however, her voice sang loudly and clearly to me and her personality leapt from the page.

As always, the writing is superb, but in this case, even more so. As all of the characters in Saturn’s Children are constructs of a sort, artificial beings, his writing and his style were particularly relevant. He managed to convert chemical and mecha...more
Tony Gleeson
This was probably not the best place for me to begin exploring Charles Stross-- I read it to be familiar with it when he showed up at our shop for a signing. This book is ablaze with homages to science fiction authors old and new, from Asimov to Scalzi, and it's written quite puckishly despite there being some rather dark and disturbing ideas behind the whole thing. As any good speculative science fiction should, it has some intriguing extrapolations of social implications for the future. Think...more
Bruce
Well, three and a half stars ;-)

I have a sort of proprietary narcissistic interest in stross, given that I found out about him early in his career, bought Toast when it was his only published book. Or maybe it's just that I like his writing.

But for some reason the guy just puts out stuff that has a high amount of mediocrity to it. Maybe it's the crazy amount of books he's writing-- I mean, you don't make any money as a sci fi author, so I understand, or maybe that's just how he writes, mostly.

An...more
Ada
Jan 03, 2009 Ada rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: sci-fi
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Doug
I was disappointed by this - Stross has the capability to produce something much better. This book has a twist (look ma, no humans!) and some of the ideas are pretty interesting - but frankly I think he's writing too much and too hard. This could have done with maturing for a lot longer.

The main character is very reminiscent of the lead from Friday by Robert A. Heinlein which is apparently intentional. As with Friday the lead is a robot made for erotic purposes. For what it's worth, the supposed...more
Karlo
This is the first of Stross' books that misfired for me.

Stross starts out by quoting Newton "standing on the shoulders of giants..." and then referencing Heinlein and Asimov. I remember liking Heinlein's Friday a great deal, but then that was 20 years ago when I was a Teenager. I read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistess" more recently and enjoyed it, so I'm cool with Heinlein. Asimov is more problematic; I've read lost of his stuff, but even then I found his ideas were neat, but his characters where a...more
Skyler
A synthetically erotic novel about the legacy humanity leaves behind: Robots. In fact, androids (like the main character) have become obsolete, and Freya is left with a feeling of isolation, as if her race discarded her. As she tries to find her place in the galaxy, Freya unwittingly becomes more important to a possible future of her people than she could have imagined.

I loved how this book captures a very strong feeling of the "soft" novels that my mother used to read. The strangely sexual natu...more
Rebecca
So, I'm told this is a tribute/parody/something to the old Heinlein and Asimov space operas. I can see it -- I read a lot of Heinlein as a teen, including some stuff that my parents probably didn't know about. It is a little less problematic* than some of the old Heinlein, though, despite the former profession of the character. Seriously, you can feel the allusions to Friday throughout the first half and even the main character's name (Freya is the Norse goddess of beauty, related to the Germ...more
Smcleish
Originally published on my blog here in August 2009.

What might happen if the human race became extinct in a couple of centuries time? In particular, what would robots, computers, and other intelligent machines left behind do? This question is basically the starting point for Stross' Hugo short listed novel. The central character of Saturn's Children is a particularly obsolete robot, designed as an escort - an intelligent sex toy - for the men who no longer exist. Freya Nakamichi-47 is scraping a...more
David
In a recent review of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Fractal Prince, Paul di Filippo positioned the novel between the works of Greg Egan “and the cyberpunkishly dense Charles Stross.” Having just finished Saturn’s Children, the first book I’ve read by Stross, di Filippo’s assessment seems spot on.

Saturn’s Children is set in a far future where humans are extinct, leaving behind a solar system populated with intelligent robots—so intelligent, in fact, that they have stepped into the void left by their crea...more
Ratiocination
Disregard the cover, or at least wait a bit and gauge it in context. This is a book set in an android society after the humans are gone, but recently enough that it's still very much in their footprint. Effectively the human legal system is still in place, under which AIs were property. Legal persons still exist even though people don't: the protagonist manages a narrow kind of independence by running a small corporation that technically owns her. It's a lot more common to be owned by large corp...more
Mark
My feelings on this one are numerous and complex. In simple terms, it is a tale of the solar system and the robots that populate it, after humanity has gone extinct. And of course, the behavioral code for robots is inspired by Asimov's Laws. Stross admits that the book is intended as a tribute to both Heinlein and Asimov, and I think he does them both justice. But it's so very sad. At least in the background information. In some places, it reads like Ian Fleming and Umberto Eco teaming up to wr...more
Elf M.
I read Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross, and after having thought about it some, I've come to the conclusion that the book is shallower than I wanted it to be.

The book follows the adventures of Freya Nakamichi, a sex 'droid designed to please her human masters. Unfortunately for Freya, human beings have been extinct for two centuries or so, leaving us with a character with no idea what to do with her life. Most robots designed to serve human beings were cute, anime-like designs for household...more
Joey-Joey-Jo-Jo
As with most Stross books, the premise is absolutely delightful but the execution doesn't quite keep up. I know I said no more sex-bots in my sci-fi, but I've been meaning to read this ever since listening to Robyn's FemBot, so I grand-fathered it in. And it was worth it! The main character is a sex-bot designed back when human's were still alive, but activated after the human population dwindled and then disappeared. She has adventures in a scheming and wildly varied society of fellow robots, a...more
Roger Eschbacher
Despite an off-putting cover that appears to have been designed with 14 year old boys in mind, Charlie Stross' "Saturn's Children" is an interesting read with a great premise -- once the human race dies off, what's to become of their androids?

In Stross' clever scenario, they continue on -- struggling to fulfill the aspirations of their extinct creators (space exploration, extraterrestrial colonies) while picking up a few of our less than noble traits too (slavery and murder to name a few).

The st...more
redentis
I found this book when looking through the list of past Hugo Award nominees and Winners. This book didn't win the Hugo Award in 2010 but I thought I'd give it a read as I wasn't persuaded by the winner.

The book presents an interesting view of a future in which humanity has become extinct leaving behind a society of robots, most of whom were built with the famous Three Laws ingrained. The book is a fascinating journey through this society as it grapples with the consequences of being built by hu...more
Jacqie
I do love me some Charles Stross. I read this one because I'm trying to pick which book of his to feature in the science fiction book club I'm starting, and because it's up for a Hugo this year. I think I will not choose this book for the club, but go with Singularity Sky.
Freya is a difficult main character. She's been created to love and bond with humans as a concubine, but since humans went extinct before she went online, she's got this pathological co-dependent need for love. Stross did this...more
Daniel
Charles Stross' work can be really hit or miss for me. This book was enjoyable, but seemed almost rushed. I don't mean rushed in terms of pacing, but almost like there was a lot going on in his head that never actually made it to the page, which made it a far less thoughtful book than it could have been.

There are some interesting ideas in here, particularly the musing on how a society of robots designed to serve humanity cope with the fact that humans are extinct, and thus their primary purpose...more
Andrew
Robot space prostitutes. A good enough reason to read this alone. Also, the fact that humanity is extinct. These fairly trite scifi staples are played with well here, with some interesting exploration of what it actually means to be sentient, and our place in the universe. Humans dream up stories to give their lives meaning and themselves a place and reason to exist outside of simply being. The protagonist of this book unfortunately knows with certainty that her whole reason for existing is poin...more
Cathy
I was excited when I picked this up from the library. It is subtitled, "A Space Opera," and dedicated to Heinlein and Asimov, then opens with the 3 laws. I figured it had to be good. Then I read the reviews and was less hopeful. But in the end, it was a good, solid 3. Nothing wrong with that. The whole book is patterned off of Heinlein's Friday meets Asimov's Robots, moderately successfully. A robot (a dirty word to them) designed to be a female sex slave gets into all sorts of adventures and tr...more
Bookmarks Magazine

Charles Stross is a unique voice among today's wave of "New British SF" writers, but he also knows his history. Saturn's Children is dedicated to old lions Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, and the ghosts of both (especially Heinlein) can be felt in the latest effort. Reviews of the novel vary wildly, which may suggest as much about the tastes of particular SF readers as it does about the specific case. The combination of sex and violence clashes a bit with some deep philosophizing on identity a

...more
Peter Hiller
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Alan
Mar 07, 2009 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: If you liked Heinlein's later work...
I simply devoured this book. Oh, not in one straight sitting - my life does not allow for that anymore, for books of any serious length. But it did only take me two days to read, snatching time when and where I could. I kept wanting to find out What Happens Next, and by that measure Stross succeeded with me unconditionally.

Well, almost...

Stross writes a rollicking tale, an explicit homage to the sf of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. The book is dedicated to these giants of the field, in so...more
Derek Broughton
I didn't think I was going to like this story at the start. When, by page 5, we've seen that a post-human Solar system, inhabited solely by robots, looks almost identical to the worst one we might have had if humans had survived, one might not expect much.

Add to that, that purely coincidentally, one of my GoodRead friends read this between the time I took it out of the library and getting around to it, and she found the identity-switching very confusing (as individual robots can insert their sib...more
Preston Page
This book is described by the publisher as, "seething sexuality," and it does. I will admit that those words are the reasons I decide to read the book. If they kept pictures of patrons walking out of the library with books, the shit eating grin on my face would have been a dead giveaway.

The plot was great even without the sex (But I am Damn glad the author put it in) and is way outside the 95 % of science fiction, and everything else, that is shit. I admit without hesitation, I would not have ke...more
Unwisely
If you read a lot of science fiction, you have probably read many, many books where the female characters pretty much exist to help out (and eventually sleep with) the male characters. They have no goals of their own and are effectively sex robots. Well, Charles Stross doesn't even bother trying to hide; the protagonist is a sex robot, straight up. Which makes all of the parts where you sit there rolling your eyes going, come on, that's just male fantasy fairly legitimate. Because you can imagin...more
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Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

SF...more
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