Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3095472 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

A fantastic heroine and a very deep novel
This is, quite simply, one of my favourite books of all time. Friday is a 'combat courier' with a big secret. She's a genetically engineered person, at a time and in a society utterly hostile to her nature and existance. Alongside the action this book is a sweet study on the importance of having a family (biological or otherwise) and a long hard look at the ugly face of prejudice. The prose can be a little dated at times, but that's perhaps half the charm - that such a forward looking novel (socially as well as technologically) could have been written in such a style.

Oh, and this book has the best opening page I have ever come across in my life. Just read it!

An all time favorite!
Heinlein is great, although sometimes a little bit paternalistic vis-a-vis women... This book is about a very strong female character's desperate struggle to be accepted in a very decadent society, that rejects her as non-human

Dialogs are witty and smart, and the book is a great introduction to Heinlein's libertarian philosophy (which goes further than politics, to include family structures, sexuality, etc.)

One of the best Heinlein IMHO...

Un-Person or Super-Person?
Genetic engineering is one of the hot buttons of today. Part of the debate about it centers on just how much tinkering should be allowed on the human genome. Heinlein, writing this long before such tinkering was physically possible, tackles some of the ethical questions such capabilities bring to the fore.

Friday Jones (aka Marjorie Baldwin) is just such an `enhanced' person. Her parental genetic makeup was carefully selected from some twenty donor parents, mixed up in a test tube, and was raised in crèche for such `artificial people', or APs as they are referred to throughout this work. This careful selection and manipulation means she is stronger, has faster reflexes, enhanced vision and hearing, and is more intelligent than `normal' people. Does this bring her acceptance and respect as one of the best of humanity? Far from it. For in Heinlein's envisioned future, APs and their cousins, Living Artifacts (people modified to be obviously different from normal humans, referred to as LAs) are declared `un-persons', relegated to the absolute bottom of the social pecking order, forced to work as effective slaves, subject to summary `elimination'.

Which leads to what this novel is really all about: Friday's search for acceptance and love. As such, this is a character driven novel, and the plot seems to wander around quite a bit with no clear objective, though each step along the way shows more and more of just who Friday is. Friday's world seems to be part of the `Crazy Years' of the Future History (though it's not directly connected), where nations have been Balkanized, multi-national corporations have at least as much power as nations, and wars between various factions, even those that use nuclear weapons, are taken as just another fact of life. This background provides for plenty of action, as Friday, as a secret courier, must wiggle her way past these conflicts. It also allows Heinlein to get in some of his typical satirical cracks at some of the idiocies he saw around him (though there's less of this pontificating here than in almost any other of his late period novels) - most interesting to California residents is his depiction of San Jose, it's government, it's obsession with the people's initiative process, and the frequent incompetence of elected government officials (or, for that matter, corporation executives who forget that customers pay their salaries). Along with this are his comments on various forms of marriage partnerships, some of which will make blue-noses very uncomfortable, and one depicted gang-rape scene might violently upset quite a few.

Right alongside these items are his technological predictions - he does a pretty good job of envisioning the internet and interconnecting web of just about everything from financial transactions to digging out the dirt on anyone. But his major point of departure is the Shipstone, apparently a really enhanced version of a battery, which has helped solve a lot of the world's energy problems. But I found his prediction of the return to the horse-and-buggy for in-city transportation unrealistic, most uncharacteristic of Heinlein's predictions, as such means simply cannot support the population density of today's cities.

As some have remarked, even with these technological improvements, this is a more depressive outlook for humanity's future than Heinlein normally presented. Here he thinks it's so bad that there is no saving Earth, that the only place humanity can really grow and achieve its potential is on other planets, free of the all the cultural and political baggage that encrusts this world.

Friday is very charming and believable for most of this book, though a decision she makes late in the book doesn't ring quite true. The obstacles she faces should make people do a little soul searching about just what it means to be human and about prejudice in all its forms. And the world she has to live in might make people realize that if they don't do something to change some current societal trends, it could become our future. This is not his greatest book, but with its high action quota, its very personable protagonist, and its strong relevance to the world of today, it's a most worthwhile read.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)