Autonomous: A Novel

I don't necessarily read many debut novels during any given year, at least not until the Hugo Finalists are announced (as they be later today as I write this) and one or two are on that list. Ann Leckie's ANCILLARY JUSTICE comes to mind as the most recent example. I typically want to try to get through a few books on my to-read list, or new novels that are coming out from authors that I like. But every once in a while a novel is published that gets so much buzz that I can't ignore hearing about it, and if the story sounds like something I might be interested in, I'll give it a try. AUTONOMOUS, by Annalee Newitz, fits that description.Jack is a pirate, but not the kind that has a hook for a hand, sails on a ship that flies the skull and crossbones, or is Johnny Depp. Rather she is a humanitarian pirate, one who is attempting, in her own way, to take down big pharma. She sells recreational and other fun drugs to raise money for her real cause: reverse engineering drugs that will help humanity. But as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Jack reverse engineers a drug called Zacuity. Zacuity is a productivity drug, intended to help the people who take it, under controlled circumstances, become more focused and well, get more work done. The key phrase is "under controlled circumstances". Jack unleashes the reverse engineered drug on to the populace, and those who take it become addicted to it, to the point of focusing on tasks so intensely that many die because they don't eat, sleep, or do anything else that a person needs to do to survive.Meanwhile, the IPC has traced the drug back to Jack. Newly awakenedd bot Paladin is teamed up with an IPC agent named Eliasz, and the pair go in search of Jack in order to bring her to justice. Jack, on her part, is desperately trying to find a drug that will cure the addiction and stop people from dying. She discovers that Zacuity, in fact, *is* addicting, and that the corporation that is marketing it did not perform sufficient testing to determine any nasty side effects. In effect, Jack perfectly reversed engineered the drug, and now she has to not only fix the problem she caused but try to take down the manufacturer in the process.The novel, then, on the surface looks to be a standard, run-of-the-mill crime story, with the possible twist that the well-intentioned pirate may actually win the day and take down the big, bad, nasty pharmaceutical corporation in the process. Of course, things aren't that simple. And in fact, that particular story line is just a small part of what Newitz is doing here.Bots, and some humans are born into indentured servitude, and must earn their way out. Humans also can voluntarily enter into this indentured life style because they don't have much choice. Paladin is an indentured bot, for example. Newitz explores the implications of this system and what it means to society. Newitz is also exploring the nature of sexuality and gender fluidity and the ability to make choices. Bots, for example, are generally considered male, and Paladin is presented with a choice she's never had before, a choice bots don't generally get to make.Relationships and characters are explored in detail as well. Eliasz and Paladin develop a romantic relationship; we learn about Jack's past relationships and how her character developed to get to where it is at the time of the novel and *why* it developed the way it did. The bottom line here is that this is a very complex, layered novel that may be an adventure crime story on the surface but is really much much more than that by the time it is over.Newitz also doesn't present any easy answers, doesn't tie anything up in a nice little bow for the characters or the reader. Life is dirty and messy, and the reality is that things rarely turn out such that people live happily ever after, and the big bad corporations rarely get their comeuppance.AUTONOMOUS is a complex, involved, and many layered novel with engaging characters and terrifically written. Since I began this review earlier today, the 2018 Hugo finalists were announced, and AUTONOMOUS did not make the cut for Best Novel. It is a strong novel and deserved to be on that list. It certainly deserves your consideration the next time you're looking for something to read.

You hope the world will never look like this. It's 2144. Slavery has revived, camouflaged as indentured servitude. Theoretically, indenture is limited to a specified term; in practice, contract owners frequently refuse to honor the commitment. Millions of humans and robots alike are trapped in these unbreakable contracts. Only rarely do indentured servants escape, and autonomous robots are rare.This is the world imagined by Annalee Newitz in her intriguing new science fiction novel, Autonomous.Bioengineering is supreme. The pharmaceutical industry, and the lives of most of the world's citizens, are dominated by a handful of huge pharma corporations. These companies produce patented drugs that lengthen lifespan, enhance productivity, and induce euphoria as well as prevent illness. Unfortunately, officially sanctioned drugs are far too expensive for most of the world's people. A flourishing pirate economy fills some of the gaps by reverse-engineering the most popular drugs. To combat the pirates and enforce patent law, the paramilitary International Property Coalition (IPC) sends teams of agents around the world to capture or kill the practitioners of "black pharma."IPC Agent Eliasz Wójcik is partnered with an indentured military robot named Paladin. They work out of a large military base operated by the African Federation. The pair is charged with hunting down a notorious pirate known as Jack, who appears to be somewhere in the Arctic. In fact, as the novel opens, Jack (real name: Judith Chen) is traveling on a submarine along the Arctic coast "beyond the Beaufort Sea." Jack has learned that a batch of a new, reverse-engineered drug she had unloaded in Calgary is causing sometimes-lethal side effects. She is on a mission of her own—to develop an antidote. Jack knows that the small batch of black-market drugs she distributed is only a minor part of the problem: the official drug, a product of Zaxy, one of the world's largest pharmacorps, is in use as a productivity-enhancer at large corporations that can afford to pay its high price. Jack sees it as her responsibility to identify Zaxy as the source of the problem, get the word out worldwide, and make an antidote freely available. Eliasz and Paladin are determined to stop her.Robotics has advanced in tandem with bioengineering. Now, robots may take on an unlimited variety of shapes, sizes, and forms. Biobots closely resemble humans and include both biological and manufactured materials. Other robots, only vaguely humanoid, possess human brains to supplement their cybernetic capabilities. Yet others may be configured as insects, birds, or machines. Paladin, for example, appears roughly humanoid but has automatic weapons concealed in its chest and arms as well as a human brain in its midsection. However, Paladin is much more than a military machine: it communicates both by vocalizing and wirelessly, it is curious and continuously absorbs new information—and it hopes to gain its freedom from indenture and join the ranks of autonomous robots.Politics in the world of 2144 is as dramatically changed as economics. Climate change and epidemic disease have upended the geopolitical order, leaving the United States a backwater and Europe frozen, in the absence of the Gulf Stream. The world's dominant powers are the Asian Union, the Brazilian States, and the African Federation, where most of the advanced biotech companies conduct their research. North America is a Free Trade Zone, with its most prosperous cities in the summery Canadian and Alaskan Arctic. It's there that most of the action in Autonomous takes place.Known primarily as a blogger and science journalist, Annalee Newitz is the author of five books of nonfiction. Although she has previously published science fiction short stories, Autonomous is her first novel. Newitz holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in English and American Studies and was on the Cal faculty for a time. She now writes full-time.

This was a brave attempt at trying something really new that for me failed, and failed most badly in the closing pages. I closed the book with a feeling of being very vaguely kicked in the stomach and wondering why any of the characters had to go through their respective tribulations. The full bleakness of the dystopian setup only comes through very slowly and what at first seems a pacey yarn gradually turns into a nightmare where no one is really in the right or wrong and everyone's motives start to look futile. Weakest of all, without spoiling anything, was a love affair whose non-human component was initially set up as something that would be very hard to imagine any human falling in love with. A more sympathetic description of said component in the early stages might have helped this thread become more believable. Full marks for effort though, which I know is just faint praise.

This is not by any means a bad book, and the main reason I give 3 stars, is because it is constantly trying too hard to be cool/new/unique and it detracts from the story.For prolific readers of sci-fi, many of the 'groundbreaking' topics, will just be redressed versions of already familiar themes. Human indenture, AI rights, 'robin hoods' against the mega-corps, etc.There is an element of 'magic' to the tech, in that there isn't always much explanation - basically "because biotech, and protein", in most cases.Some of the internal dialogue of the 'robots' was fun and pleasant to read, occasionally bringing fresh perspective.Also, there seems to be some running gender issue throughout the story, which feels completely forced, eg most of the main characters names do not traditionally reflect their gender, and it just feels so deliberate.In closing, it could have been an excellent book, if it wasn't trying so hard.

Like, I suppose, any literary genre, science fiction is a very broad church. At its best it is the literature of ideas, often using the future to critique the present. At its worst it is can become an excuse for mindless violence and endless action sequences. It is often about world building, and that can range from novels which drop the reader into a new environment with no explanations, to books of endless and often tedious exposition.So where does Autonomous sit? To start with it is very much part of the cyberpunk sub-genre. It is set on earth, with only fleeting references to any form of spaceflight, in a strongly dystopian world. Jack, real name Judith Chen, started her career as an academic chemist and now travels the world in a submarine. She analyses and retro-engineers patented drugs, undercutting "Big Pharma", by selling them cheap to a desperate population. Things go wrong when a drug she has manufactured starts generating obsessive addiction. The fault is not in her pirating, but is an inherent design fault in the original drug.On her trail are a government agent, Eliasz, and his partner, a robot Paladin, who are prepared to adopt any means, including torture and murder to stop her revealing what she knows.Within this framework, Analee Newitz is definitely aiming for the more intelligent end of the spectrum. When Jack is attacked by thieves, she ends up being accompanied by Threezed, who is essentially the equivalent of an escaped slave in this hi-tech world. The relationships between both Eliasz and Paladin, and Jack and Threezed become sexual, and Newitz uses them to explore what social and sexual exploitation mean in a world with both human and artificial intelligences. Fluid sexuality is another definite theme of the book, as Jack slips easily between different gender relationships. The relationship between Eliasz and Paladin is more difficult. On becoming attracted to his robot, Eliasz is troubled by what this means about his sexuality, applying an offensive term to himself. However, Paladin carries a human brain to augment its ability to recognise faces, and when Eliasz learns that it belonged to a dead female soldier, he feels free to identify the robot as female and the relationship can progress. This becomes troubling if the only way their relationship can flourish is through being heterosexual, through Eliasz imposing a gender identity on Paladin, and through his shutting down any broader exploration of his sexuality. Alternatively, Newitz may be more subtle, using this relationship as a critique of traditional, testosterone fuelled violent masculinity. It certainly is violent masculinity as scenes with this pair definitely resemble the more action-driven style of SF.The world building here is strange, and slightly unsatisfying, although that gives it a certain sense of realism. Newitz provides no explanation of the world, and doesn't create any holistic view of it. We see bits of Canada, a fragmented USA, Casablanca, and African deserts, but don't get any feel of the overall geopolitical situation. The realism comes from a worms eye view. We see what the people on the ground see, and nothing more. Overall this is a society which feels a bit like a hipster 2018, with more artificial intelligence and more designer drugs. It doesn't really feel like 150 years in the future.Probably the least successful part of the book is the plot. Jack and Threezed travel around looking for a cure to the flawed drug and a means of publicising it. Eliasz and Paladin chase them while their relationship develops. Then they all meet up. Then there is a slightly underwhelming denouement. I guess Newitz could be applauded for avoiding traditional morality and ending on a more ambiguous note.So, in summary, there are definitely some interesting things going on in what is an essentially flawed work.Three and a half stars.

The glowing endorsements led me to believe that this book might be something memorable, and indeed, all the ingredients are in place for a top notch story. It boasts an interesting cast of characters, a promising evil pharma conspiracy, sentient AI robots and a dystopian society where both people and bots are indentured in a highly unequal society. I settled down for what I hoped would be a good read.I was sorely disappointed. Instead of ramping up the chase and giving the cast something thrillingly intelligent to do, the self absorbed characters fail to live up to their potential and argue, navel gaze about the past, failed relationships, broken dreams and the misery of servitude while the plot plods towards a resolution. The author skates uncertainly over the science and the action and there is no feel that we are in a future society. Newitz clearly hasn't set foot in a high tech biochemistry lab or worked with real scientists and her vision reads like an assembly from a tv shows and other fiction. Perhaps this is why she dwells on weirdly unconvincing sexual liaisons, skipping the 'get to know you part' and launching straight into the intimacy. It's toe curling, especially that between the pursuing military agent and his indentured bot. I'm sure there was supposed to be some great insight but I failed to spot it.

___OVERVIEW___In a world of mature and advanced biotechnology humans regularly use drugs to prolong youth, upgrade themselves, change appearance and increase their functionality or productivity for work. It isn't a world of equals; everything has a price, some can't afford medicine, and many humans begin life as 'indentured' slaves - traded like property as they work their way to earn a 'franchise' which gives them freedom.Judith 'Jack' Chen is a new variety of robin-hood, reverse engineering big-pharma's wonder drugs to sell bootlegged copies to poor regions and hospitals. Once a prodigy of biotechnology her experience of the world drives her to become a black/grey market rebel reminiscent of our 1970s anarchists. Usually working under the radar she suddenly finds herself amidst the front-line when a drug she bootlegs turns out to have illegal properties and sideffects which were covered up by the corporation which made it.___REVIEW___For me this book was excellent. I was drawn in by storytelling which by nature of the plot had a fast moving quality and intensity which was totally unforced. The world and circumstances around the characters is vivid and believable; so much it could be a slightly 'over-exposed' scary prophecy of things to come... The characters - their hurts, motivations, frustrations, desires, contradictions - are authentic and their situations definitely relatable to present day. The science itself, well it walks the line of clearly being boundless fantasy but with streaks of realism which make it feel possible.The book opens up many questions on the ethics of freedom and identity, also the relation of consumer-corporate and corporate-government; the ambiguity of these interactions is explored - one person may see another as unwittingly supporting a corrupt regime, others may see that same regime as good for the world.Overall outstanding book - 5 star by a margin; it makes a lot of other literature look very small and plain in comparison. Would recommend for any lover of sci-fi, science or fantasy.