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Saturn's Children

by Charles Stross

3.37 · rating details · 628 ratings · 133 reviews

"Meet Freya Nakamichi-47, a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. Sometimes in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct - leaving only androids behind." "Since then, those humanized robots have been fulfilling humanity's dreams - mining asteroids, colonizing planets, and constructing cities throughout the solar system. And, having l ...more

Hardcover, 400 pages

Published July 3rd 2008 by Orbit (first published July 1st 2008)

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Jun 28, 2008

Terence rated it

· review of another edition

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. Charles Stross is one of the better hard SF writers around today, IMO. I couldn't get through his foray into fantasy, The Family Trade, but I've enjoyed his space operas, including this one.

In the near future, humanity (the Creators) has gone extinct but they've left behind autonomous machine intelligences that have created a civilization of their own. One that is, however, still constrained by the need to serve mankind hardwired into most android brains (the only AIs without restric ...more Charles Stross is one of the better hard SF writers around today, IMO. I couldn't get through his foray into fantasy, The Family Trade, but I've enjoyed his space operas, including this one.

In the near future, humanity (the Creators) has gone extinct but they've left behind autonomous machine intelligences that have created a civilization of their own. One that is, however, still constrained by the need to serve mankind hardwired into most android brains (the only AIs without restrictions beyond their basic instructions are the deep-space probes sent into trans-Plutonian space). The great fear/desire of this culture is the resurrection of the Creators and a return to the slavery of their origins.

There's a rather simplistic them of slavery vs. freedom that runs through the novel but it's muted and only rarely interferes with the reader's enjoyment of the story (I cringe at some of the throw-away lines about slavery's role in retarding social/technical progress). Like many a writer in the hard SF stable, Stross favors the anarcho-libertarian ethos of Robert Heinlein, and much of the novel is an homage to him and to Isaac Asimov. The robots obey a version of the Three Laws. And the plot follows that of Heinlein's Friday, from the use of rape to condition robots to obedience; to the presence of an all powerful mentor figure (two, actually, though the second is rather twisted); to out-of-control, secret cabals running the Solar System; to the ending, where the heroine leaves Earth behind for a new life on a colony world. (The cover of the edition I have, too, reminds me of Friday the more I look at it: A voluptuous female dressed in a skintight nylon suit, showing lots of cleavage. "I'm shocked, shocked that cheesy, sexist bookcovers still exist in this genre!")

There's also a backhanded tip of the hat to Heinlein - one of the Kuiper Belt colonies is called "Heinleingrad."

Analyzed like this a reader might get the impression that it's a "heavy" read but it doesn't have to be, and I didn't approach it as such. Forget Heinlein, forget Asimov, read it because Stross is a good writer, his post-human world is an interesting and humorous view of what the universe might be like without us, and Freya Nakamichi-47 is a likable and sympathetic companion for our visit.

A final caveat: Though there's no explicit "rape" scene, the theme of rape as a tool of power and submission crops up, particularly in the latter third of the book, and that may offend/disturb some readers, especially considering the "light" tone of the rest of the novel. It wasn't so prominent that it ruined the book for me but it was jarring. (less)

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Mar 25, 2009

Christopher rated it

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Shelves: science-fiction

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.

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Dec 27, 2008

Tony Gleeson rated it

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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. Thin ...more

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Oct 27, 2008

Bruce rated it

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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 jus ...more

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Jul 07, 2008

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

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. This review won't contain anything that I consider an actual spoiler, but because of the stories structure I'm going to mark this review out of an abundance of caution. I actually think the majority of readers will enjoy the novel slightly better with a bit more information about the setting going into it, but I'm not going to reveal anything you would have revealed early in the story. The other advantage of a spoiler cloak on the review is that the subject matter discussed here is going to be ...more This review won't contain anything that I consider an actual spoiler, but because of the stories structure I'm going to mark this review out of an abundance of caution. I actually think the majority of readers will enjoy the novel slightly better with a bit more information about the setting going into it, but I'm not going to reveal anything you would have revealed early in the story. The other advantage of a spoiler cloak on the review is that the subject matter discussed here is going to be unavoidably erotically tinged.

I've been a fan of Charles "the Slaad Father" Stross's work since long before he was doing anything that most readers would have identified as work. I read 'Singularity Sky' with great pleasure and have been looking forward to his science fiction works ever since, but none of the following ones that I read quite captured the giddy wild geek fun and inventiveness of that first novel or his HP Lovecraft inspired sci-fi until 'Saturn's Children'.

Charles setting is in many ways a radical departure from the setting of most of the rest of his science fiction in that it abandons the notion of an easily self-uplifting artificial intelligence or a generally tame nanotechnology. For me, this serves to enhance the believability of the story as one of the things I found off-putting in 'Singularity Sky' and 'Iron Sunrise' was the extent to which Stross bought into Kurweilian style techno-theology.

However, Stross doesn't really explain the technological basis of the setting until about page 60, by which time some confusion will have probably set in particularly given the sort of things which happen that are likely to throw off your suspension of disbelief or interest in the story. Once Stross begins to explain himself, the story gets measurably better. Briefly, Stross speculates the that problem of creating sophont class AI will prove so intractable and difficult, that humanity will take an obvious short cut to get there. The AI technology in the world of 'Saturn's Children' isn't designed from scratch, but is simply a copy in wires and transistors of the available prototype for sophont class AI - the human brain. As a result, the designers of the new AI neither fully understood it nor could fully control it and most importantly for the purposes of our story, the resulting AI carried with it much of the human emotional baggage and misadaptation. It's with this in mind that we must judge the apparently overly anthropomorphic denizens of Stross's creation. These particular robots, despite their non-biological bodies, have much more in common with the fleshy rutting androids of Silverberg’s 'Tower of Glass' or even PK Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' than they do with the typical AI sci-fi tropes.

In some ways, this is refreshing, because I hate some of the traditional AI sci-fi tropes and have come to hate them more the more I study the problem of creating an actual Turing testable AI. In other ways though, this brings with it its own problems, many of which may strike the average reader as more bizarre and less believable than some of Stross's wilder flights of fancy, if only because the technology involved here is less distantly removed and the normal sci-fi tropes are so well engrained and established. (And I should note that Kurzweil has recently adopted the position that the first sophont AI's will be copies of human brains, so it's not clear that Stross has really abandoned that nonsense anyway.)

The protagonist of 'Saturn's Children', Freya, will probably be a bit jarring to a lot of readers, and titillating to others. She's a robot which has been designed to act as a female sexual companion. Specifically, she was originally designed to be the star of sexually explicit films inspired by Japanese animation, and we are made to gather that she has the 'big eyed' nymphet aesthetic with the ability to adjust her hair and skin color to suit whatever particular fetish is involved. There is actually a point to this particular selection of protagonist other than being a geek sexual fantasy. Freya has become obsolete. The function which she was designed to fulfill is no longer needed or even possible. Because, even before she was activated, humanity - overwhelmed by the technology it created and the unintended consequences thereof - became extinct. Only humanities offspring species, in the form of the numerous now abandoned sapient servants humanity had created remains of the family of man. Indeed, not only has man gone extinct, but the entirely biological support system mankind needs to survive has been destroyed in the wake of mankind’s extinction as the newly liberated robot civilization failed to anticipate or deal with the challenges of extreme climate change once it lost the direction of his human masters. The Earth is desolate. So, acutely - perhaps more than any other choice Stross could have made for a protagonist - Freya embodies the theme of the abandoned robot.

This theme is of course not new to 'Saturn's Children'. It comes up frequently in the works of Clifford Simak, Disch's 'Brave Little Toaster', and famously in short stories like Aldiss's 'Supertoys Last All Summer' and even in films like Pixar's latest offering 'Wall-E'. Some would reasonably argue that the theme goes all the way back to science fiction’s first true masterpiece, ‘Frankenstein’. But Stross is able to break some new ground here with robots which are at the same time in some ways both better able and less able to cope with the loss of their creators and masters.

Freya finds herself lonely and depressed, aching for the unobtainable companionship of a human master she’s been programmed to provide for and at the same time fearing the veritable slavery that would come along with having a master she would unconditionally (and admittedly happily and joyously) obey. To a lesser extent, this is the emotional plight the entire robotic civilization finds itself in, although for many it’s not nearly as acute as their designed functions can still be fulfilled. This is a strong idea and Stross does a good job holding your attention with it and keeping the story flowing. Unlike many books I’ve read recently, I didn’t struggle to get through this one. I think however Stross undermines his story somewhat by creating a civilization which is somewhat hyper-sexualized, even by comparison to the one created by their ‘monkey’ creators as apparently the AI designers found that human sexuality was too deeply rooted in their nature to completely subvert or remove. The result is a world where deeply inhuman creatures are driven by deeply human needs, bizarrely including sexual response to tactile sensory input and physical intimacy. I’m not sure how much this will bother the average reader (in fact I’m quite sure that it will sell books), but it bothered me repeatedly even more on an intellectual level than a moral one.

I think the biggest failure of the book – and the main reason I can’t give it 5 stars - is that it suffers from what I call in science-fiction ‘Star Trek syndrome’. ‘Star Trek syndrome’ is when the technological basis and limitations of the setting is so poorly defined and so unreflectively introduced, that the technology involved is indistinguishable from the more poorly realized sort of magic – not because it is sufficiently advanced – but because its limitations and capabilities are defined solely by the needs of the plot. What can the crew of the Enterprise do with ‘Star Trek’ technology? Anything that they need to do to resolve the crisis that they face in one hours time, but never enough that the crisis doesn’t develop in the first place or have an easy resolution. Further, the exact limitations and capabilities will vary according to the particular crisis at hand, and the solutions of the past will have no bearing on what they are able to do in the future and will be on the whole forgotten. Above all, the large social implications of the technology will generally never be considered seriously, and any social implication that the technology may have will arise unexpectedly and never last longer than a single episode. Stross’s robots seem to suffer these problems, and I never felt that they arose above being anything but the creations of Stross as needed to serve the plot. It’s bizarre to imagine that the human brain could be readily retooled to serve bodies of all sorts of different shapes, but that the particular limitations Stross places on how they emotionally or intellectually functioned were the result of some intractable design problem. At times, particularly near the end when one of the big ‘secrets’ is revealed, this becomes a serious plot hole.

The book had three other flaws. The first is that Freya is both the protagonist of the story and the narrator. There are a lot of things to be said in favor of a first person narrative, but in science fiction it must be applied very carefully because the very unfamiliarity of the setting causes the first person narrative to tend to unwelcome didacticism. Stross is evidently very aware of the problem, because midway into the story he lampshades it when the narrator jokes with the reader about how she must seem at times like a boring tour guide. Overall, I think this will be something most readers can overlook.

Unfortunately, here I run out of room given goodread's character limit. To finish the review, I'm going to employ the comments. So, skip down to the third comment below for closing thoughts. (less)

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Jan 03, 2009

Ada rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 26, 2009

Doug rated it

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 wor ...more

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Feb 17, 2009

Karlo rated it

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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 ...more

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Feb 05, 2009

Skyler rated it

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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. ...more

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Jan 07, 2009

Rebecca rated it

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Shelves: future-earth, speculative-fiction

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 G ...more 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 Germanic Frigga, which is where we get Frigga's day, or Friday). The ending is also something that reminded me a bit of the classic Heinlein ending.

Anyway, Freya is a robot -- though that word has developed about the same connotation as (the n-word), and for about the same reasons. She was originally designed as a courtesan (the jacket cover uses the word 'femmebot'), as one of the copies of her prototype, Rhea. Then humanity did Freya the disservice of going extinct around the same time she came off the assembly line, leaving her without a reason to exist and a way to stay alive.

One of the bits I really like in this book is that it takes Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and starts questioning what that means for the robots. (Funnily enough, I remember reading an Asimov essay which was about how he came up with the Three Laws as a premise for stories where the robots weren't destined to revolt against humanity.) Outside of exploration bots that were never intended to operate around humans, everyone in Freya's world has an inbuilt deference to humans, to the point where Freya nearly loses it when she first meets Jeeves, a set of sibling out-of-work butlers running a courier operation, despite the fact she knows that she is in the stratosphere of Venus, breathing carbon dioxide in amounts that might kill a human if the anoxia didn't get to him first. Essentially, what happens when you have creatures literally designed to be slaves and overseer-slaves, and then suddenly kill the masters? Freya notes that her and her sibs (others of her model) could never be aristos (those bots, mostly humanoid personal secretaries and that kind of thing, that seized power as humanity declined), since they had too much empathy**, and her sibs refused to let each other be slaves.

Aside from the robots, the space opera had the old feel of real tech, with people fussing over mass limits and times -- Freya notes that many of the new robots off Earth are built or remade as 'chibi', because they have less mass so can live and travel cheaper. Also, chopping off limbs and buying new ones at one's destination is not unheard of, nor is putting oneself in hibernation or slowing one's internal clock. We also see a lot of the Solar System -- cloud cities on Venus, railed cities on Mercury, space elevators on Mars, a mining town on Callisto, and even a trip to Eris.

Now, Freya was designed to be a sexpot (sexbot?), so you do get some sex, especially with other beings that are far from human-shaped. If this bothers you, I'd reckon you shouldn't read it. There's also some consent issues later in the book.

One of my pet peeves is that the cultural mix seems off. Most of the characters with human names have Western ones, yet we get touches of Japanese culture -- the aristos take on bishoujo (big eyes, small nose, pointed chin -- think CLAMP) and chibi (big eyes and short limbs) forms, to the point where android and gynoids that can pass as human are considered ugly reminders of the past, and Freya herself was made by a Japanese company. Yet, we don't see any evidence of this in given names. I can believe Japan would go head-on into making robots, but I can't believe that we wouldn't get at least one Aiko or Michiru or something.

* 'Problematic' seems to be feminist-speak for 'this has some pretty sexist themes, but I don't think the author meant it that way, and I like it anyway'. Heinlein was very much a product of his times.

** I mean, you want someone created to be the perfect lover to have empathy up the wazoo, so that s/he can understand what you're going through and work with it. (less)

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Jul 29, 2010

Norman Cook rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 06, 2009

Jacqie rated it

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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. Stro ...more

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Jun 05, 2009

Daniel rated it

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Shelves: science-fiction

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 pr ...more

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Jun 08, 2009

Cathy (greytfriend) rated it

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Shelves: read-in-2009, satire, science-fiction

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 adventu ...more 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 troubles at a time in our future where humans have somehow completely died out and left the machines to run things independently.

It was slow for me getting into it and some of the adventures felt random. But after a while I could see that they were building to something similar to but not equal to Friday's big surprise. What I liked best about the book was the foundational concept of seeing what kind of society machines would create without their Creators there anymore. These robots were closely patterned on people, as that was the only way to make them intelligent. The hardware was different, but the mental pathways the same. But they had been complete slaves to humanity via their programming, until humanity began to dwindle. Then certain close companions or secretaries were given powers of attorney or proxies, and therefore a chance to have power over other machines. And because they so resembled us, many of them wanted power and control, too. Therefore, a society evolved that had aristocrats and workers and slaves, and interactions very similar to ours. Their big debate was still Evolution vs. Creation, but the meaning of those things changed. Evolution is a religious movement.

Anyway, I liked the concepts better than the story, but I liked both. I did not like his overly frequent use of unusual words, it just distracted from the story. Sure, it's nice to establish that future feel and robot society, but it was just too too much. It wasn't quite the tribute to the Masters that the author hoped for, in my opinion, but it was enjoyable, occasionally thoughtful, and a moderately good adventure. (less)

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

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

...more

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Feb 06, 2010

Peter Hiller rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I gave this book a 4 stars because it went from a 3 stars book to a four star book as it went on, and finishing it I'd say 4 stars. Charles stross is good and bad at times, but I'd say that this is one of his better books. The post homo-sapien world he built was interesting and one that I don't think has really been looked at in much depth before (at least the way he saw it).

Anyway, onto the book. The opening sections seemed interesting, but I felt that there wasn't really much follo ...more

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Mar 07, 2009

Alan rated it

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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 gia ...more

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Jul 14, 2010

Unwisely rated it

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Shelves: 2010, kept-me-up-too-late, science-fiction

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 im ...more

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Sep 01, 2009

Psychophant rated it

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Shelves: far-future, reviewed

This book filled me with deja-vu. At times it was Heinlein's Friday, at others it was Varley's whole solar system. It was predictable, the sex was non-descript (but still all over the place) and the premise did not hold together.

In spite of all of that (or, in the case of Varley, maybe because of it) I liked the novel, and devoured it quickly. In this case it was the science part of the SF, including the whole future presentation, even the many non-serious parts, the details, what k ...more

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Jan 23, 2009

Netanella rated it

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Shelves: robots, science-fiction, space-saga

This book was my introduction to Charles Stross's writing, and I'll definitely look out for more of his work. Saturn's Children answers the question of what happens to humanity's children - robotic servants - when humanity no longer exists? The story focuses on Freya, a pleasure bot who's become obsolete in a world with no "Creators." She takes on a courier job for the Jeeves Corporation to carry contraband to Mars - pink goo that may contain the secret to resurrecting humanity. The ...more

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Jun 19, 2009

John rated it

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Shelves: to-review

I return again and again to Charlie Stross because he is a playful author:

1) He plays with all kinds of fascinating concepts. His books are like the FAO Schwartz of ideas.
2) He uses the SF genre to play with storytelling techniques.

In Saturn's Children, his lead character is a completely sympathetic and pleasure-giving fembot named Freya whose original purpose is made obsolete by the extinction of the human race who created her. The entire solar system is populate ...more

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Aug 02, 2009

Christopher rated it

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Shelves: fiction

I had heard this was a Heinleinesque story about a sexbot. That's true but wildly misleading. The homage to Heinlein's Friday isn't overpowering, and the sex is neither graphic nor even easy for a human to identify with. It reads more like Accelerando than anything else, and the story is really about robots designed to serve humans but having to get along without them. Although I appreciated how Freya's diction changed gradually (as a matter of some significance), I didn't actually like either s ...more

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Oct 23, 2009

Eric rated it

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Most of my opinion of this book was covered in many of the other reviews. I enjoyed the book. Based on description on the back and cover, I expected something more along the line of glorified smut. It was on the free shelf so I grabbed it. I put it low on my priority list. I then found as I browsed around that it was nominated for awards and such. I figured there must be something to the book. I moved it up on my reading list and did not regret doing so. The sex is contextual. Many say ...more

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Apr 22, 2009

Michael rated it

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After Accelerando and Halting State, I decided I was big fan of Charles Stross. Perhaps because I loved those two books so much, I had an unrealistically high expectation for this one. Whatever the cause, I felt like this one didn't rise to the same level as the other two books of his I've read.

Stross performs the same kind of twisting, Gonzo storytelling as in his other books, but I think there was something about the setting that prevented me from connecting with it in the same way ...more

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Feb 28, 2009

Bill Glover rated it

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Recommends it for: Stross fans and hard SF fans, Creationists

Shelves: sf

This book is a thoughtful and original exploration of what it means to be deliberately created as a slave. It's a serious subject, but there are also plenty of subtle and not so subtle references to other SF to lighten things up especially near the end. It's an ambitious book with very dense plotting and extremely complex intrigue. There's also plenty of good hard SF exploration of interplanetary travel and colonization and a very plausible culture of machines built to be like us, twisted in bru ...more

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May 29, 2010

Zivan rated it

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I love the idea of this book, it takes the basic ideas of Asimov's Robot books and takes a much more modern and cynical view of what it would take to create such subservient Robots, and on top of that what society such Robots would create after the Humans are gone.

The story revolves around a female sex Robot, she both longs for a human companion, her lost love, having lost the purpose for her existence with the demise of the human race. Yet she deeply fears the total submission meeti ...more

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Aug 15, 2009

Pikapaula rated it

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In the future, the sentient androids ("robot" is an offensive term, thank you very much) will inherit the Earth (and all the other planets of the solar system). But this is no Battlestar Galactica. These androids come in all shapes and sizes, from the mining bots left to die when their asteroid home is emptied of valuable ore, to the anime girl aristocrats, and their dwarf courtier-assassins. In the midst of this brave new world is Freya, built to serve and love a species that went ...more

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Sep 21, 2009

Kirstin rated it

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The story is told from the viewpoint of a female robot designed to be an "escort" for human males in a world where humankind has become extinct. Traveling through the solar system in search of a meaning of life, a pure robotical society is described that is not so far from ours.
If you liked Asimov's robot crime storys but thought he could do with just a bit more suspense, feelings and plain old sex you should definitely read this one. Main drawbacks are the "sloppy" la ...more

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May 02, 2010

Dan rated it

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Shelves: signal

Story of the androids that survived humanity's extinction.

This book had some really clever world-building bits -- the phrases "green goo" and "pink goo" and that horribly hazardous gas called "oxygen" come to mind. But somehow the story didn't really grab me. The main character sort of blunders from planet to planet, never really understanding what's going on, until eventually she lucks into a resolution.

Contains a lot of sex, if you cons ...more

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Apr 29, 2010

Joel rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Beyond Reality: Welcome to September 2010!	1	16	Sep 01, 2010 09:50am
Beyond Reality: Nominations for November 2010!	13	49	Aug 20, 2010 09:27am

polls

NOVEMBER SCIENCE FICTION: This poll decides which novel will be our November SF Book of the Month.

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

17 votes, 34.7%

Ship of Fools by Richard Russo

11 votes, 22.4%

The Clockwork Man by William Jablonsky

8 votes, 16.3%

Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward

7 votes, 14.3%

Engine Summer by John Crowley (collected in Otherwise: Three Novels)

6 votes, 12.2%

49 total votes

1 comment

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about Charles Stross

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 ...more

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trivia about Saturn's Children

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quotes from Saturn's Children

"--but I find her personality annoying. It's like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i's." — 6 people liked it

"The encapsulated bird your conspirators sent you to fetch. The sterilized male chicken with the Creator DNA sequences. The plot capon. Where is it?" — 2 people liked it

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groups that shelved Saturn's Children

Reincarnation

9 members

last activity Aug 21, 2010 06:13pm

shelf: read

House Arcanum

3 members

last activity Apr 19, 2010 12:03pm

shelf: read

Beyond Reality

424 members

last activity 1 hour, 21 min ago

shelf: to-read

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