Friday
A highly praised novel--now in a new paperback edition
Friday, winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française, is a sly, enchanting retelling of the legend of Robinson Crusoe by the man the New Yorker calls "France's best and probably best-known writer." Cast away on a tropical island, Michel Tournier's god-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against incredible odds, he almost succeeds. Then a mulatto named Friday appears and teaches Robinson that there are, after all, better things in life than civilization.
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To contextualize this review, I’ll mention that I read Stross’ “Saturn’s Children” right before this book, which was inspired by “Friday”. And consequently, I can only recommend you go read that instead because this is a pretty bad book in comparaison.
Saturn’s Children (SC) takes most of the concepts in this book and not only improves on them, but gives them actual character instead of a single trait (and that trait is being horny). SC’s protagonist is justifiably horny at times because she was designed as a “pleasure companion”, but Friday over here is only an artificial person, apparently indistinguishable from humans and STILL has a higher body count than the sex robot.
SC also does the robot assimilating into human society better than this book, getting rid of the humans altogether instead of doing the race allegory.
The world building is okay, but in classic Heinlein fashion, the main character’s POV is all we get, and frustratingly limited at times because of that restriction.
The book is weirdly paced, frankly boring at times, and every third page (on average) has some sexual activity going on.
I’ll say that I’m growing used to his style and I don’t dislike it as much as I did with Starship Troopers, but this book is still pretty dreadful. Go read Saturn’s Children instead I beg you
Saturn’s Children (SC) takes most of the concepts in this book and not only improves on them, but gives them actual character instead of a single trait (and that trait is being horny). SC’s protagonist is justifiably horny at times because she was designed as a “pleasure companion”, but Friday over here is only an artificial person, apparently indistinguishable from humans and STILL has a higher body count than the sex robot.
SC also does the robot assimilating into human society better than this book, getting rid of the humans altogether instead of doing the race allegory.
The world building is okay, but in classic Heinlein fashion, the main character’s POV is all we get, and frustratingly limited at times because of that restriction.
The book is weirdly paced, frankly boring at times, and every third page (on average) has some sexual activity going on.
I’ll say that I’m growing used to his style and I don’t dislike it as much as I did with Starship Troopers, but this book is still pretty dreadful. Go read Saturn’s Children instead I beg you
Okay, sometimes I display bad taste. This is a good example. This book is bad because the main character is a woman and she displays a very cavalier attitude about gang rape. This can be attributed to any number of causes: 1) perhaps Heinlein just doesn't understand female anatomy and women's emotional lives, 2) perhaps Heinlein wanted to display what a superhuman badass spy the main character is, 3) just trashy writing so as to kick up some publicity bad or otherwise to sell books? And I tried to forget this initial disaster except the main character goes on to completely forgive one of the rapists. Ugh, too much.
But let's say you just ignore that whole thing, which is tough, but let's say you do-- what a fun meandering sci fi book! It's fun to see what Heinlein predicted right or wrong, though he still has the opportunity to be proven right. The difficult-to-obtain futuristic library technology described by Heinlein is completely ours these days. In Heinlein's future it's easy to travel the galaxies, but expensive, whereas in real life we're not even close. IVF and even 3-parent IVF is already real, though specific genetic modifications to the embryos are still just on the horizon. (Crispr/Cas9)
And I like Friday/ Marge/ whatever her current identity is. I like how she's an unstoppable badass and a needy emotional mess at the same time. (Except when it comes to rape?)
Anyway, worth reading if you can compartmentalize feelings about fiction and enjoy trashy fun.
But let's say you just ignore that whole thing, which is tough, but let's say you do-- what a fun meandering sci fi book! It's fun to see what Heinlein predicted right or wrong, though he still has the opportunity to be proven right. The difficult-to-obtain futuristic library technology described by Heinlein is completely ours these days. In Heinlein's future it's easy to travel the galaxies, but expensive, whereas in real life we're not even close. IVF and even 3-parent IVF is already real, though specific genetic modifications to the embryos are still just on the horizon. (Crispr/Cas9)
And I like Friday/ Marge/ whatever her current identity is. I like how she's an unstoppable badass and a needy emotional mess at the same time. (Except when it comes to rape?)
Anyway, worth reading if you can compartmentalize feelings about fiction and enjoy trashy fun.
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