/lit/ - Literature

Saturn's Children, Charles Stross, 2008.

Stross has garnered praise for many of his other novels, notably the short story collection "Accelerando", and I was excited to try one of his works for the first time. However, Saturn's Children did not really impress.

The novel takes place in a future solar system where humans have gone extinct, and their robot creations have picked up the reins of society. I found the setting to be well-detailed and interesting, with several technological aspects being investigated closely, mostly relating to transport (this will be a theme). Unfortunately, the robots themselves have minimal explanation, Stross mainly just establishing a few things about them (chips to transfer memories, regeneration, slave chips) and leaving it at that. For such an interesting setting, it has taken a remarkably boring turn - 90% of robots are still "enslaved" to "aristocrat" robots (former subordinates of humans who were given a large degree of freedom as society crumbled), and these aristocrats are barely discussed.

The characterisation is poor, with only the main character (Freya) being explored in any depth. She is (sigh) a sexbot/courtesan, who was taken out of post-production storage some decades after the human extinction, and therefore never actually got to interact with one (other than in the memories she shares with other sexbots of her line, via aformentioned chips). Instead of looking at this lack of purpose/destruction of it, Stross chooses to make her flip-flop between cynical assassin-type and incredibly horny. She is a somewhat flat character, which leads Stross to rely on other quirky types often, none of whom provide much more than temporary comic relief (intentional or not).

Now, the plot. The novel chronicles Freya essentially larking around the solar system on a mission to bring an artificial chicken egg to a "dark lab" with an end destination of Ceres, of very little actual importance to herself, as she basically only took it up to get herself out of a jam, and because she was very horny for the guy who gave it to her. Stross then describes her gallivanting about from Mercurcy to Venus, Mars, etc etc, focussing about half on what she does on the planets and half on how she's actually getting between them (no FTL, but no requirement to keep a human body safe makes it much easier). Throughout said journey she has uncomfortably-described robot sex with many things including a sentient re-entry capsule, a hotel who fucked her sister in the past, and another robot larping as a human. I definitely found the "transport" segments most interesting, primarily because they allowed for a chance to get to know some side characters and did not feature as much badly written robot sex, with one exception. The ending sucked.

Verdict: 2/5. promising world not explored properly, questionable plot (that seems like just an excuse to do rocket porn), and dull characters.