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A review by telescopewizard
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
2.75
well.. some pros and some cons.
there are two things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
there are two things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
- what makes scifi SCIFI and not just just scifi-flavored action or fantasy
- how to write a sci-fi world that is meant to be the future of our real world and make it feel plausible while still suiting the themes of the story.
and I feel like this book starts out by really knocking both of these out of the park. It just all flows really well from its first principles. There’s an UKLG quote for this, of course: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9816514-science-fiction-is-often-described-and-even-defined-as-extrapolative
BUTTTTTTTTTTT. once the plot and characters are established and ur bought into the premise, it proceeds to just... not really do anything interesting for the rest of the book. +worse, it makes some choices that actively baffled me n put me off.
spoilery example:
so, paladin. this is the part of the story i was most looking forward to, since all the pullquotes are like WOW WEIRD SEXY ROBOT STUFF!! questions of identity and autonomy!! the author's website is called techsploitation!! like surely this will be so fun to read. here is (part of) the premise of paladin as a character: robot. AI. not a human. no innate sense of things like gender. he IS wired into a human brain, though, and even tho the human brain doesn't actually impact his sense of self in any way, all the humans around him assume that it does and that it's the MOST important part of him. that's SUCH a cool set-up!! and especially knowing that his relationship w eliasz starts out so complicated re: gender and anthropomorphism and false assumptions. when all this was being explained i was like WHOA SO COOL i can't wait to see how this eventually resolves, how paladin eventually gets through to eliasz on his own terms, how they eventually come to understand each other across this species(?) divide. but..... they never do. it ends w paladin just kinda accepting that eliasz doesn't Get It and that's fine, she(!) will just let eliasz call her a woman because it doesn't matter either way, and leave the uncontested specter of traumatic religious-upbringing internalized homophobia just kinda looming over the relationship. and this is presented as a cool moment of autonomy for paladin, to make the decision that it doesn't matter. which, okay, i guess. making peace with never being fully understood is... like, valid, as a resolution. the way it was written just did not feel good to me idk. like paladin's bio brain gets DESTROYED IN COMBAT and i was like ohhh fuck here it is, the moment of reckoning, where they're gonna have to have a real convo in their relationship!! but they. don't. it's literally barely addressed even tho it's set up to be a huge deal to eliasz. paladin just, like, processes it internally and decides it's fine because they love each other. IDKKKKK I WANTED IT TO BE FREAKIER!!!! there was one pretty cool horny robot repression scene at the beginning and then it was all increasingly, dare i say, tradwife-y from there. DISAPPOINTING.
also the pacing fell apart. and the end was simultaneously too abrupt and too neat. and there were some gaping holes in the cultural worldbuilding. idk i feel kinda bad not giving it a solid 3 bc there was a lot that i loved but the end just left such a bad taste in my mouth
BUTTTTTTTTTTT. once the plot and characters are established and ur bought into the premise, it proceeds to just... not really do anything interesting for the rest of the book. +worse, it makes some choices that actively baffled me n put me off.
spoilery example:
also the pacing fell apart. and the end was simultaneously too abrupt and too neat. and there were some gaping holes in the cultural worldbuilding. idk i feel kinda bad not giving it a solid 3 bc there was a lot that i loved but the end just left such a bad taste in my mouth