Once upon a time, 1992 if you must know, the late Robert Heinlein published a spiffy novel called Friday about an Artificial Person, a clone to be precise, named Friday who was genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally considered to be better than normal humans.
Friday worked as an operative for a private intelligence service (or so it was inferred) who was headed by a man known simply as Boss. Friday being an AP cared much to be part of a family and was also somewhat obsessed by sex. (This is one of Heinlein’s World as Myth novels which means sex was very much part of what the reader should expect.) Many, many adventures happen before the story comes to a conclusion of sorts including a mission up the beanstalk to Earth’s Luna colonies.
Sixteen years later, Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children was published. It concerned the adventures of an android named Freya (named after the Norse goddess who the day of the week called Friday is named after) who is engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally considered to be better than now extinct humans who created. She is various missions for a a private intelligence service (or so it was inferred) who was headed by a being known simply as Boss. Sex is even more present than it is in the Heinlein novel and Freya spends a lot of time talking to the soul chips of her dead siblings.
Stross in summation uses this novel as a quite brilliant counter to almost everything that Heinlein wrote. Just take these two passages:
From Saturn’s Children:
Please excuse my lack of depth; I’m a generalist, not a specialist. Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff—or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations, or comfort the dying—when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?
In Time Enough for Love:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!
So how is it as an audiobook? Like Friday, it’s a first person narrative with obviously a female narrator. Bianca Amato who was born and raised in South Africa gives Freya a world-weary voice that hints at a British accent without being overwhelmingly British. (And, I know there’s no such thing as a generalized British accent in reality.) She also does a damn fine job of giving character to the other voices here.
I think all in all that it’s a splendid audiobook and I wholeheartedly recommend it to any of you enjoy a good science fiction story told well.
