 – Customer review on 20/07/2008
No pink bits. Big or little.
The humans are all gone, and the robots don't want them back. Also, amusingly, they are a bit scared of organic replicators. They actually have an organisation called the Pink Police to try and stop bad organic spreading, whether the recreation of humans, or something much smaller.
Given this book is a riff on Heinlein's Friday, and Friday is a book I despise I am not sure how that biases me against doing something different. The main character is Freya, most of the time, is is even called Fri--Freya, some of the time.
Despite no people around to tell them what to do doesn't mean everything is utopian in robotland: "But many of us rot in bondage, unable to step outside the boundaries imposed by aristo owners. And if my company ever falls into liquidation, I—as my own principle asset—am vulnerable to receivership. The threat of the arbeiter auction block is a very real one, for there is no such thing as unconditional freedom in this brutal robot-eat-robot world. My sibs and I help each other. If one of us falls on hard times, we club together and try to outbid the predators until we can set the unfortunates on their feet again. But that’s hardly a guarantee of freedom."
The protagonist is of a class of robot built to be very human-like: "It doesn’t come to that, of course. But he has a surplus of self-control and such a sense of dignity that he almost explodes before he lets himself admit that yes, he’s alone in a luxury climber with a sensuous, high-class sex robot who’s close enough to a Creator femme that he feels dizzy in her presence unless he forces himself to focus on ideological shenanigans and the price of power. And then it turns out that he has a thing for Creator females, and the same sexualized submission reflex as the evil Granita Ford. I find it’s quite common among persons of a certain status."
So, we have a robot power struggle, conflict, and conspiracy going on, along with an identity crisis or three - as unlike people, you can backup or copy robot types.
Freya is hired to transport an object that the Pink Police will likely be very interested in.
I think this is the author's weakest novel - of course weak for Stross is relative, as it is still a perfectly decent book, just not as good as the rest.
3.5 out of 5
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