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Saturn's Children

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Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$24.95~~
Buy New: $13.85
You Save: $11.10 (44%)

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Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

22 reviews
Sales Rank: 13595

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3

ISBN: 0441015948
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780441015948
ASIN: 0441015948

Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - Saturn's Children

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinctleaving 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 very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.

Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

A Confusing Journey Into the World of Femmebots September 6, 2008
I thought this was going to be a wonderful book when I started it. Stross has quite an imagination for worlds unlike ours. He has created a world where humans are extinct and robots have colonized the galaxy because they don't have human biological restrictions. He has some really interesting ideas such interplanetary travel that starts with a giant ferris wheel that takes your pod into orbit where you're attached to something kind of like a ski lift that takes you to the next planet. He also has an interesting idea for a movable city that travels on railroad tracks across the face of Mercury to avoid the extreme hot and cold weather of each day as the planet turns.

I should have stopped reading after Mercury.

The main idea behind the story is that robots can experience the memories of their dead siblings by inserting their dead siblings' "soul chips" into themselves. Thus, your siblings' education, training, and memories can become your own. Unfortunately, this makes for confusing reading. The main character, Freya, switches between at least 6 identities. And other robots around her are switching identities, too -- even taking on some of Freya's alternate identities. I had no idea who was who and who was doing what to whom half the time. And then there was also the problem of not knowing if the character was dreaming, remembering, or living an experience of her own or of someone else.

You get to the end of the book and it's just more of a relief than an answer to any questions. I really wanted to like this book based on the strong beginning, but it just got more convoluted and confusing the further along it went. If I weren't stuck in a waiting room with this book, I don't think I could have finished it.

4 out of 5 stars

Better than expected! September 4, 2008
I like Stross' work and based on the plot description on the jacket I thought this would be a quick romp. But CS delivers enough plot warps and character richness to make me slow down and read carefully and enjoy it. A great slant on the universe without humanity, chugging along with the creations that we made along the way. And these creations of course have adopted lives of their own, with their own faults (regarldless that some of them were stupidly built in by the creators). I was sucked into the plot, help captive, entertained and really liked the original treatment of the premise. Great fun.

4 out of 5 stars

SAturns Childen - why the title? August 31, 2008
the title is a clue to the book

Galileo wondered, "Has Saturn swallowed his children?", referring to the myth of the god Saturn eating his own children to prevent them from overthrowing him (Wikipedia)

3 out of 5 stars

a spy thriller August 30, 2008
Classical science fiction takes a novel concept and pursues its surprising implications. If we were to build intelligent robots, would they need us? In Saturn's Children, Charles Stross accepts the reasonable premise that humans are incapable of long-term occupation of alien worlds and nevertheless manages to construct a space opera setting by supposing that android robots would establish a post-human civilization vaguely resembling our own. Although I enjoyed the ideas Stross raises, the plot was not much more than an excuse to tour the solar system and the robot sex scenes were not as creative as I had hoped. I preferred The Glass House.

3 out of 5 stars

Single Femmebot, looking for True Love in a Loveless Solar System... August 29, 2008
What to do if you're a femmebot created to serve mankind, but mankind has gone extinct? Male sexbots are particularly rare (production/demand for them was lower, naturally), and the new standards of robot civilization are for smaller sizes (chibis) and anime-style faces. Aristos rule, cruelly, and Freya, a poor, outmoded female sexbot, was created to please and has difficulty behaving cruelly, even if she could be one of the Aristos.

Aristos can slave-chip one such as Freya at will. Mankind has left their robots heirs to a harsh civilization that mirrors the relationship of the humans and their robot servants. When Freya runs afoul of an Aristo on Venus, she ends up running for her so-called freedom, into a world of plots to bring back their Creators, to counter plots and the restrictions of the Pink Police (who keep biological replicators and matter from being spread illegally), to Freya's "graveyard" of chips holding the memories of her sisters who are no longer... which she can absorb, to the mysterious Jeeves corporation Freya ends up taking assignments for.

Things get quite complex and confusing, with Freya absorbing the memories of the mysterious ultra-assassin/agent Juliette... becoming her at times.

The concept and the themes of personhood and legacy and creating and relying on slaves and the morality of owning sentients--robots or otherwise, is fascinating. The worldbuilding of a robot civilization that outlasts man--and replaces him, building on mankind's past and reaching into the future is also intriguing. The aspects dealing with various robot factions wanting to work with biological matter and perhaps re-create man also has its interest, but that part of the book is the weakest. Freya's adventures, running about from Venus to Mars to Jupiter, dealing with the plots and counter-plots and multiple personalities, taking up most of the last part of the book, can be confusing and unrewarding. It doesn't seem to carry through the promise of the initial concept and world-building and was somewhat disappointing.

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