A review by andystone
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
2.0
This book did not hit for me on any level. The characters were flat and made decisions that made absolutely no sense. The science was uninspiring and felt like a mashup of keywords that are being talked about now—AI, 3D printing, patent drugs—without any evolution of how they would be different from our current interpretation.
The plot follows two different sets of characters, switching off every chapter until the climax where they meet… for all of one page. There was no discussion, no one learned anything and nothing was solved. By the time I got through 80% of the story, I worried that there wouldn’t be enough time to do something compelling to give a reason for the trials and tribulations of the previous couple hundred pages. Sadly, those worries were well founded.
Finally, it was strange that one of the primary characters was both overtly homophobic about his own possible sexual orientation, but then immediately comfortable about his feelings for an indentured robot after he found out the robot identified as female. Somehow, the robot’s sex (which we were told didn’t matter in the story) was the one item that he couldn’t deal with when falling in love with a bucket of bolts.
The plot follows two different sets of characters, switching off every chapter until the climax where they meet… for all of one page. There was no discussion, no one learned anything and nothing was solved. By the time I got through 80% of the story, I worried that there wouldn’t be enough time to do something compelling to give a reason for the trials and tribulations of the previous couple hundred pages. Sadly, those worries were well founded.
Finally, it was strange that one of the primary characters was both overtly homophobic about his own possible sexual orientation, but then immediately comfortable about his feelings for an indentured robot after he found out the robot identified as female. Somehow, the robot’s sex (which we were told didn’t matter in the story) was the one item that he couldn’t deal with when falling in love with a bucket of bolts.