I’m now looking forward to reading the other novel, “Neptune’s Brood. This is the first volume in a series of two books and a short story (so far) known as the Freyaverse. This novel explores sentience and self determination from different perspectives, and still manages to tell a great story in the process. The beings of the future are relatable in spite of being inhuman. The action takes place from Mercury to transplutonian Eris. This is an exciting and adventurous novel, that literally spans the solar system. She takes a job as courier for the Jeeves Co., and then graduates to spying for them. Freya is trying to retain her autonomy in this grim society. There are uber-rich aristos who have essentially enslaved 90% of the other beings. Since this society was modeled on that of their deceased creators, it is intrinsically flawed. She was activated long after the humans she was designed for were all dead, so she and her siblings now try to make their way in a society that consists entirely of other forms of mechanical life. She is a complex human sized android model that was originally designed as a sex-bot.
This brings us to our protagonist, Freya. These range from simple automata to complex androids with artificial intelligence modeled on human minds. The inheritors of the solar system are the various forms of artificial life that humanity created. This is in a literal sense, as the human race has went extinct well before the novel takes place. It’s also appropriately considered a post-human novel. Hugo Award winner Charles Stross delivers a brilliant space opera replete with groundbreaking concepts and energized by an imaginative vision of the future. “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross is subtitled “A Space Opera” and it lives up to this description.
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