Autonomous

Autonomous is an interesting story that poses a lot of moral questions. It doesn't really take sides; both the pharmaceutical pirate and the agents tracking her down are painted in sympathetic ways, as if we're meant to like them all. We see why Jack is a pharmaceutical pirate; medicine is only available to those rich enough to pay for it, so the poor stay poor and sick and short-lived. She wants to change that. She reverse-engineers drugs, manufactures them, and distributes them to the needy through her associates.

Meanwhile, Eliasz is a conflicted military agent who is sexually attracted to robots. Or at least to his partner, Paladin, though a flashback shows what might have been the start of his attraction to robots. Paladin is probably the single most interesting character in the entire book, as she muses on the nature of being indentured, and searches through her memories and the internet for information about her situation.

The book does have LGBT content - Jack is bisexual, and Eliasz is - robosexual? Is that a thing? Paladin could be called nonbinary or trans; she repeatedly mentions that gender isn't a thing to robots, but because she's a military robot, most people call her a he at the beginning of the book. She learns the brain inside her is female, and to make Eliasz more comfortable with his attraction, she decides to use female pronouns. Eliasz does use the F word to refer to himself being attracted to the robot at the beginning, when they were using male pronouns. This puzzles Paladin for a while, causing her to search the term and figure out what Eliasz meant by its use.

There's a lot of complex world-building in this book that is barely brushed past. From the corporations who own patents covering everything, to the system of indenture that covers humans as well as robots, to the bio-domes that cover cities (but it's livable outside the biodomes, so why are they needed?), to the new federations that cover continents that used to be divided into several countries - there's a LOT going on. And there's not just robots, but also some pretty advanced cybernetics implanted in humans as well as an everpresent network of data that can be tapped into with implants that everyone has.

Ultimately, for as complex as the world is, and cohesive as the plot is, I'm left wondering who, if anyone, was in the right in this story. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be happy with the ending or not. I've seen other reviews saying Neuromancer was a way better book in a similar vein, and I actually have copy of that waiting to be read. So we'll see.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Enjoyed this book. Definitely a modern look at the possibilities of the future ahead of us. I have to admin I was expecting more robots and augmentations and sci-fi, but this leant more towards a political statement in particular about free access to healthcare (which is something I care a lot about being in the UK and having the NHS).

An enjoyable story and some strong characters.

While I enjoyed this book, I thought that it was trying to fit too much into a single novel. On the one hand, there is the criticism of the broken patent system and a dystopian-like future where people are essentially commodities for megacorporations. On the other hand, there are the issues surrounding gender and, to some degree, homophobia. The latter was, in my opinion, underwhelming and overly simplistic (a robot "fixes" their genderlessness in the eyes of one homophobic human by simply changing their pronouns). The world building and character development were well done.

Fascinating sci-fi that discusses Artificial Intelligence, bio-hacking, patents, human-bot relationships and piracy. It had that Asimov???s feel making me wonder about robots programming and how they could develop consciousness and feelings.
I felt empathy for all the characters even the evil ones! Although there???s no good versus evil. It???s more like everybody???s doing what they believe is right and the arguments are all valid.

This was a ton of fun. Futuristic pharmaceutical piracy (complete with a stealth submarine!), evil corporations and capitalism run amok, forbidden (or at least socially unacceptable) human-bot love, issues of bot gender, sexuality, and . . . yeah, autonomy.

This definitely lives up to its name, allowing the reader to ponder questions about identity, free will, and love, by looking at a bot grappling with these issues, and seeing that his/her struggles apply equally to us.

But this isn't a stodgy think-piece - it's a swashbuckling tale with lovely characters and interesting relationships. Even the nastiest character gets some depth and sympathy. I almost think too much.

My one complaint is that this suffers from Quick Plot Resolution. Having artfully set all the characters in motion and developed their opposing points of view in a convincing and engaging way, the story left me a little disappointed when it wrapped things up quite suddenly. Where I expected the plot lines to meet, meld, and yield something new, they actually just intersected ever so briefly, which was the end of the story, except for a coda for each player.

It would have been interesting to see a little more detail and an actual redemption arc for the one character we see unapologetically choosing to murder people. There's a gesture in that direction, but I found it largely unsatisfying. I guess the explanation could be “aren't we all subject to programming that other sources installed,” but the story doesn't quite bring me to absolving everything on that basis.

Still, the trajectory set up at the end of the story does promise satisfying resolutions, and it's enough to hang your hat on. Given that everything up to that point was entertaining, thoughtful, and well written, I can easily give this 4 stars.

The excessive use of the F slur was completely unnecessary. I understand what the author was trying to go for, but we don't need to use slurs to get our point across. There's also no trigger warnings for it either.

Among other things that bothered me, I dnf'd at 75-80% I was really enjoying the story and the characters and was going to push past the slur use but it just keep being used and other things came up that just went down hill and made me more and more angry.

This book is really clever. I love stories that explore gender through a sci-fi lens, and of course Annalee Neuwitz delivers. I was much more interested in the Paladin storyline, but Jack is a pretty great protagonist too (middle-aged, bisexual Asian tech pirate? More of this please). The style and story itself remind me a lot of Cory Doctorow. It's pretty violent and gritty at times, but the themes of autonomy and gender are powerfully and thoughtfully explored. If you are an io9 reader, you probably will enjoy this.

A book that starts by quoting The Last Saskatchewan Pirate will always have my attention. A book that does that because it is, in fact, about a Saskatchewan pirate will have my love.

Jack, the pirate in question, lives in a world where pharmaceutical companies have increased their influence in the world and can offer people a cure to nearly any affliction - if the price is right. So, like any self-respecting pirate, she decides to start to reverse-engineer those drugs to provide them to those that don't have the means for them. This works fine for her until one of the drugs starts to work a little bit better than intended.

Part of what makes the dystopia of Autonomous so frightening is how realistic it seems. Drugs that make people addicted to work? Intelligent robots that can be kept as indentured servants? The destruction of nation-states, being replaced with zones of economic influence? Not only do these things seem possible, they seem like desirable goals for certain segments of the population. That depressing realism in Newitz's presentation of the fantastic helps keep the fiction grounded, as well as adding more tension to the plot.

The characters of Autonomous are likewise fascinating. It's a story full of characters that could easily be cliche - the pirate with the heart of gold; the soldier with the dark past; the robot who yearns to be free. Newitz fills these characters with enough emotional depth, though, that they become real and full people.

The cover blurbs on Autonomous describe it as a modern-day Neuromancer, and it's an apt comparison. The novel's look at biotechnology and pharmacology is refreshingly new, and it feels like a novel that will have a similar impact as Gibson's did in 1984.

Occurring mostly in the year 2144, the author imagines a dark future. Countries have mostly disappeared, replaced by corporations. In some ways, this story reminds me of Cory Doctorow's work. The patent system and intellectual property rights are more powerful than human rights. Slavery goes by the more acceptable name of ‘indentured'. The callous attitudes towards the taking of human life in the pursuit of protecting profits was disturbing, as was the laissez-faire attitude regarding drug usage and loose sexuality.

3.5/5 (uffff, casi casi casi 4)

Gran historia que he disfrutado durante la lectura y después. Muy recomendable.

He dejado reposar esta lectura algunos días antes de escribir la review.

Muchos de los temas que plantea (el libre albedrío, la sanidad, la independencia, etc...) han ido creciendo en mi. Muchos de los personajes resonarán en mi cabeza durante mucho tiempo.

Gran lectura.

Como siempre, gracias a Alexander (que anda por aquí) por la traducción.

At the least science fiction presents us with a fun, interesting story to read. But it can do more. It allows us to examine ideas and consider implications in a “pure” form, by creating a world in which conditions are different enough from ours that we can think about an issue on its own, uncluttered by the demands of current reality. Analee Newitz's “Autonomous” is such a book.

Jack is a drug pirate who has dedicated her life to making medications available cheap to those who otherwise couldn't afford them—but she might be responsible for something truly terrible. Elias is the military agent who is hunting her down before she can do more harm—but he is working for devil. Newitz tells the story from each one's point of view, and it certainly can get complicated. It doesn't take long before your brain is reeling trying to figure out which good guy you should be rooting for.

But while most reviewers focus on the drug pirating and the exciting story, arguably the much more important layer is the relationship between Elias and his robot partner, Paladin. Elias likes Paladin. Really, really likes Paladin. But Paladin, a well-armed military killing machine, is a “he,” and Elias just can't get over that.

What difference does the perception of gender make in our relationships? In our erotic and romantic attractions? This is where the questions get tricky and where Newitz opens for us a futuristic world in which we can explore them. If you want to think about some big issues and have a heck of an exciting time doing it, I recommend to you “Autonomous.”

I bought this immediately when I read that Neal Stephenson said, “Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the Internet.”

That may have jacked up my expectations too high.

It felt a lot like a lot of other books I've read in the genre. The contemplations of autonomy were really pretty interesting but far from the focus of the book, which was entertaining enough and had pretty standard implications regarding capitalism and tech, but didn't really hold much emotional weight or any particularly new and compelling information. I'd have liked more examination of any one single theme the book had.

It's an exploration of big pharma, corporate rule, love, ownership of people, robots and even ideas.

Jack Chen is a pharmaceutical pirate that reverse engineers drugs to make them available to people in need. She does this by selling hacked in demand pills to fund her more altruistic efforts. Imagine selling off market Viagra to fund malaria relief efforts.

Now imagine Pfizer sending out armed goons with a license to kill to “protect” their intellectual property. In this case it's a military grade robot and his/her human handler that burn a bloody swath across the globe looking for Jack.

The pill in question is Zacuity. It's marketed as a productivity enhancer but in some cases leads to death as work becomes as addictive as heroin compelling users to do nothing else at the expense of food, sleep and drink. There's a horrifyingly funny throwaway when a thinly veiled version of a Tim Hortons worker (this is set in Canada after all) is so compelled to make donut holes that he begins feeding it other things including a stray cat, other customers and his own leg as he screams “We're just making donuts!... Timmo's bots make the best donuts!”

Despite all the future world-building going on here it moves at a brisk, race against the clock pace.