Saturn's Children (Stross Novel)
Saturn's Children is a 2008 science fiction novel by British author Charles Stross. Stross has said that it is "a space opera and late-period Heinlein tribute" (specifically Heinlein's Friday). It was nominated for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was a finalist for the 2009 Prometheus Award.
The novel describes the travels and perils of Freya Nakamichi-47, a BishÅjo gynoid in the distant future. Humanity is extinct and android society has assumed a near-feudal form, with "aristos" and "arbeiters" (a term from the German word Arbeiter, worker) having spread throughout the Solar System. Freya, a robotic courtesan at loose ends after the mysterious extinction of the human race (her "One True Love"), becomes a courier for the Jeeves Corporation and learns of a shadowy conspiracy to overturn, or perhaps even control, android society. Soon she is on the run with her identity and her very existence threatened.
The novel includes numerous references to the works of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, especially to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which still guide the robot society, and Heinlein's novel Friday, as the protagonist is an artificial woman, designed and trained to make love to humans and meet their every erotic desire, in a time when none exist, and any near match overwhelms her with lust and romantic longing. Freya and her kind are condemned to an existence without love, and must face suicidal despair and the murderous whims of their rulers alike.
She travels extensively at the bidding of a mysterious "Boss," and impersonates an aristocrat traveling on a spaceship as part of a mission in which she carries a mysterious egg tied to a plot to overthrow an empire. She also has a relationship to a man named "Pete." Even her name (Freya) hints at Heinlein's novel, and she is actually called "Friday" at one point, likely as a joke.
Saturn's Children is the earliest known work of fiction to include the dwarf planet Eris as a setting. Since its publication, other novels have mentioned Eris.
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Famous quotes containing the words saturn and/or children:
“Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)