Saturn's Children

What happens to robots designed, built, and programmed to serve humanity when the humans are gone? Like the Energizer Bunny, they keep going… In Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross, the robots, androids, worker bots, femmbots and other sentient machines have no choice but to continue to maintain and expand the interplanetary civilization founded by their creators. Unfortunately, humankind has been extinct for centuries. In their place, some of the cleverest (and least empathic) of the robots set themselves up as a new aristocracy, often enslaving others of their kind.

Freya Nakamichi 47 was designed to be a faithful companion to man. She struggles with her purpose in “life”, and considers ending it all, when she is offered a new kind of proposition. She gets a job as a courier, delivering special packages across the solar system, as part of the anti-aristocratic underworld. She continues to make new enemies on every planet; chasing her from Venus to Mercury to Mars and finally to the moons of Saturn. Eventually she learns the true meaning of the secrets she has been carrying. They could lead to the rebirth of her “One True Love”. A rebirth of the human race. But would this really be a good thing for her and her kind?

Saturn’s Children has been lauded as a tribute to the style of the classic science fiction author Robert Heinlein, reminiscent of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land and Friday. If you enjoy Heinlein and Stross, try John Varley’s Persistence of Vision and The Golden Globe.