Autonomous

A Novel

De: Annalee Newitz

Narrado por: Jennifer Ikeda

From award winning tech-journalist and io9 founder Annalee Newitz comes a highly anticipated science fiction debut!

Autonomous will pull listeners into a dark and dirty world that feels, at times, a bit too familiar.

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.

Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand.

And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

©2017 Annalee Newitz (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"The uncertainty, fear, rage, despair, and, ultimately, hope that the robots experience are all perfectly voiced by Ikeda. A thrilling examination of intellectual property rights and personal identity." (AudioFile)

Enjoyable story, wanted more world building!

I really enjoyed this book and the interesting tale of humans and robots.I liked that we get to observe the world from both human and robot perspectives and can see how different their perspectives are. The whole idea of the autonomy key was interesting and the whole pharmaceuticals angle the story focused on was an interesting change from what is normally seen.

I think the largest disappointment was that there were a number of interesting ideas that were just touched on as the story progresses and I would have liked to have heard more. Some characters were really interesting but we didn't get to know them as well as I would have liked (Med).

Overall, it was a great story and an enjoyable listen. Jennifer Ikeda did a superb job with narration and I felt like she gave both humans and robots their own voices.

Interesting and Disturbing

A human and an android fall in love during a drug trafficking investigation. While the couple is tender and caring with one another, they lack a conscience during their pursuit of justice. Crush suspects’ bones to get answers and then kill all witness to prevent messy questions. And I will not even mention the weird parts.

interesting

The fusion of science and medical terms was well done. Easy to understand for a non science or medical mind like mine. I was intrigued by it all. The plot of big pharma is a potent reminder of what could happen. The narrator I felt had a bit of a flat voice, and it showed in the dialouge. Otherwise I'd recommend it.

This book is a perplexing story

“Autonomous” is a novel containing robots, pirates, and technology written by Annalee Newitz.  The Audiobook edition is well performed by Jennifer Ikeda.  I was interested in this book after reading is summary details, but I quickly found the book going in a different direction.  I personally thought a solid publisher such as Macmillan Audio would have vetted the story better than they had.  I found the book to be less about autonomy and science fiction than it was about gender, sex, swearing, and drug use; both recreational and prescription.  Every one of the characters had a mouth that would embarrass and make your sailor or trucker friends blush.  The vulgar words used are even spoken by the many robots which seemed to be out of character for a machine.  Topics involving sex or actual sexual scenes are prevalent and unnecessary in this book, and I was hoping for so much more than what I was given.  For science fiction and non-science fiction listeners, I cannot recommend this book unless you are looking for an erotic robot romance story.

The initial premise of the book revolves around big pharma (drug manufacturing companies) trying to protect their intellectual property (IP) so they can profit big; similar to today’s marketplace.  All the while, a different group of people try to reverse-engineer the drugs in the hopes of modifying its potency or releasing an “open-sourced” or generic versions in the hopes of sticking it to the big pharma companies.  This bio-hacking activity is conducted in the hope of reducing a drug's cost, enhancing its power or limiting the drug companies power.  The story takes place in the near future, where there are indentured servant robots desiring autonomy and no longer want to be slaves to their assigned roles.  Some of these robots’ struggle wanting to be autonomous.

What I liked about the book were some of the more futuristic concepts the author included such as targeted advertisement and continued issues with Asian (China) imports. The story took place in some rather interesting places.  Opening with a young pirate sailing in her submarine grabbed my attention from the start of the book but things quickly went downhill from there.  I will say this was a very difficult book to finish for me because I found the characters to be uninteresting, the blatant misuse of technology, and the author’s very forward liberal agenda.

This book is a perplexing story involving gender confusion, feminism, right-wing zings, along with loads of graphic and erotic sexual scenes (sometimes between robots) disguised as a contemporary science fiction book.  The book had more erotica than most romance novels.  The characters themselves were flat, having no dimension or details making them unique or interesting.  When I finished the book, which was a difficult task in itself, I had no attachment to any character nor did I feel the author addressed the autonomy issue satisfactorily.  The writing style of the book was young adult (YA) focused having a large amount of crude and crass humor, but the language and erotic content is intended for mature audiences only.  The story itself seemed very disjointed and confusing at times, and I never really felt like I could be a part of the world the author had created.e

I found the science fiction and technology used in the book to be lacking research or having any sense of realism.  Often times technology lingo was thrown in without proper context with a hope of making the book sound technical or to have a science fiction feel.  The author included computer worms, network hacking (sprinkler systems), gene sequencing, protein folding, etc.  And in all situations, these technologies seemed to work without issue or consequences.  I found it quite entertaining when a robot would often have some special unknown ability save the day but it was hidden from the listener until it was needed to get the characters out of a situation.  I also had an issue with the way the robots would initiate communications with one another.  They would begin communicating with one another using human concepts of communication instead of computer-based protocols.  It was difficult to listen to two machines asking to talk to one another over a secure connection, and at times would even reuse the earlier agreed upon secure key; not a secure practice at all.  Only once did I remember two robots questioning one another’s authentication before authorizing a communication channel.

The book’s narration was decent and in most cases, I feel the issues I had were related to the book’s content rather than its narration.  Overall the narrator’s performance was clear and lacking any audio artifacts such as swallows, page turns, etc.  In some circumstances, I would have liked the voicing of the robots to be less what one thinks of from a 1980s robot speaking, but I understand the reason a voice like this was used.  The multiple characters were distinguishable and each seemed to have a personality by way of their voice.

For parents and younger readers, I am unable to recommend this book due to the heavy erotica and vulgar language use.  There are also many topics which may not be appropriate for younger readers including some of the graphic violence.  This book is intended only for mature audiences.

I understand the time, effort, and sweat it takes to release a book, and I do not enjoy giving a book a low rating.  However, this book veers too far from its intended center by deploying a science fiction trojan horse that instead contains a very different agenda.  I wish the writing would have been more mature, the vulgar language reduced or removed, and the heavily erotic scenes toned down.  I think there was a good story idea that instead was covered in too many other minutiae making the journey very muddied.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog.

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hardly scifi too little story, too much emotions

This is one of the piece of the "modernity" art. Too much emotions, sexuality, cats, and other nonsense.

Good, but Lacking Gravity

the sci-fi nature and wholly variant relationships between slaves, bots, and varying sexualities makes this book just a tad too intangible for me. It was an interesting story, though, and I enjoyed the commentary on big pharma and capitalism.

Good stuff

It was refreshing to see a badass bisexual woman in a leading role. Also liked the dual storylines and how it made me think about the roles of robots in the future. Nice job :)

A Great Book

A great modern queer sci-go novel with a nice anti-capitalist bend. I will definitely be reading their other works!

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture

Fast-paced and smart without losing depth or miring the listener in an inaccessible discourse of artificial intelligence, big pharma, or IT.

Great world & character building, story Arc lacks

was a very interesting world, but very short story Arc overall that felt somewhat unrewarding and rushed in the end. 90% great character building, with little outcome or resolution to show for it. voice performance was top notch though.