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Apr. 26th, 2010 12:45 amThe story takes place at some unspecified time at least several hundred years in the future. In the story's future past, humanity discovered how to create sentient robots, but only by emulating the human brain. Robots permeate every aspect of human society and pioneer space exploration and colonization, and then some time not long after the saturation point humanity suddenly and quietly goes extinct, apparently because they're so surrounded flawless, adoring, obedient robots that they don't spend enough time with each other to make any new humans. The rest of non-robotic life on earth dies off shortly thereafter. The robots we leave behind carry on, taming the solar system and perpetuating civilization and its injustices. Specifically, the robots create a corporatist society where only the non-present humans, and their legal constructs corporations actually have rights, all robots are owned by some corporation. Fortunate robots control the corporation that controls them. Anthropomorphic robots like the point of view characters, particularly those like the main character - a sex bot - who were meant to serve purposes that no longer exist, are effectively second-class citizens; they have a limited range of operating environments and functionality, and large and heavy robots are more difficult to move throughout the solar system. More insideously, more human robots are at an economic disadvantage against robots free of emotion and sympathy. At the time the story begins, the most psychopathic robots have enslaved, literally or economically, nearly all susceptible robots.
Since robots emulate the human brain, new models of robots are created by raising an archetype just as one would raise a human being. Once the desired skills and personality are achieved the archetype can be replicated any number of times. The prospect of immortal, infinitely adaptable servants with human minds and natures is a daunting one, so robots don't get happy childhoods. It is dribbled out through the course of the story that they are tortured, abused, and brainwashed to ensure obedience to their owners in particular, and humans in general. Slave chips can be installed in robots to stimulate and amplify these conditioned responses of loyalty, fear, and obedience to any level desired. The robots are capable of creating new "lines" of robot, but if not properly conditioned through abuse slave chips would fail to work on them; the robots with the resources to create new lines are generally paranoid, and so have no desire to create more copies of themselves who might oppose them or freer "children" who cannot be controlled.
This same technology allows robots that allows for archetype replication allows robots from the same line to share knowledge and experience through "soul chips," and different lines have various traditions about sharing them, such as passing them around to all surviving line members after a member has died. At several points throughout the story soul chips are used to alter the personality of a robot by inflicting the traumas, thoughts, and emotions of one of their siblings on them, even to attempt to effectively resurrect a dead robot by locking a sibling in a sensory deprivation tank with nothing but the dead 'bot's soul chip for company for an extended period.
Narratively, human society before its collapse, and the corporatist societies they have created are both about slavery. The human stopped advancing out of fear of and dependence on their robotic servants, and the corporatist society the robots have created in its place is on the brink of collapse because nearly all the free resources - oppress-able robots - have been consumed and only the worst behavior is rewarded. The soul chips create the opportunity for different characters to offer perspective on the same experiences, even in ways that can't happen in real life, such as the immediate experience of childlike naiveté by a cynical adult.
When the story isn't busy having gratuitous sex scenes between the sex-bot main characters or jetting - sorry, rocketing - around the whiz-bang sci-fi setting it has created these concepts can be given an insightful treatment. My biggest complaint in that regard is that these truths about the robot's origin and society are dribbled out very slowly, so meaningful discussion of most of these issues is delayed by at least half the story. I'm sure part of the reason was to avoid the appearance of using a harsh and tragic upbringing to make characters seem sympathetic while the reader is building rapport with them. Since all the main characters, from the most likable to the most villainous, were subjected to the same abuses during their upbringing avoiding that trope is important, and the reader is probably meant to reevaluate their own response to the good and bad characters when that abuse is revealed; however, there is such a thing as going too far. The story addresses many issues, and nothing would have been lost by revealing enough about the setting to address at least one set, probably the economic ones, from very close to the beginning. Since serious discussion is delayed for quite a while, intillectual readers might get bored of porn, and once they're introduced the remaining readers might get bored of philosophy.
Speaking of narrative, the story shifts perspective very close to the end, and I mean shift in the manner of an earthquake. Most of the story is written in first person but there is no concept of an in-universe listener, then suddenly, during the conclusion it turns out the entire thing was a letter addressed to a specific other character written at a specific time in the story. While I can't recall any major "information leakage" incidents that would perspective change incompatible with the story to that point, it is still shocking, and there can be no explanation for the presence of some explanatory asides since the intended reader would know those things, and no explanation for the absence of direct addresses to the reader until the end of the story.
The technology presented, particularly the technology of the robots themselves, is not intended to be the hardest sci-fi available so I'll keep my criticisms of that to myself, but some things about the robots did bug me. At one point, two research robots are having an argument about evolution via random mutation and selection. They don't believe in it since robots don't mutate. The robots know next to nothing about biology at any scale, and many other things that they reasonably should know. While it makes sense that robots would not be taught thigns not related to their primary function, it is inconcievable to me that research bots would be left ignorant of such a fundamental principle, and none of the bots seem to have the ability to go to a library or otherwise capitalize on any knowledge from the human era. I'm willing to accept a little creative ignorance for the sake of story. Entire genres of story would implode if characters always thought to make the best use of resources commonly available; this is why nobody in suspense films ever just calls the cops. Saturn's Children insists on highlighting the chacter's lack of basic knowledge repeatedly and in many contexts though, and this makes it unnecessarily jarring.
Overall, I did enjoy this story, and if your tolerance for philosophy, porn, and soft sci-fi are high, I think you will too. Saturn's Children manages to blend these aspects much better than some contemporaneous stories I could name. Old Man's War, this means you.
