Autonomous

A Novel

By: Annalee Newitz

Narrated by: 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?

Critic reviews

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

Drug lord Robin Hood with robotic romance

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz starts with a simple premise, a woman with a drug manufacturing capability who produces counterfeit expensive drugs to support her passion for making other life-saving drugs for poor people. At the same time, law enforcement partners, one who happens to be a robot are tracking Ms Robin Hood who has reverse engineered a new drug that happens to have some serious side effects such as killing people.

The main story is set a bit over 100 years into the future with occasional flashbacks about 25 years earlier. The main sci-fi elements amount to sophisticated drug development and manufacturing capabilities as well as advanced robots. Unfortunately, the basic premise of intellectual property, i.e. patents as the source of the problems of the day is a bit overdone and suggest someone with little background in this area. If the world were as described, then somehow in the intervening years, patents were changed to have infinite lifetimes and somehow, the world has allowed itself to fall under a single set of patent laws.

Law enforcement is also a bit loose with official investigators murdering any and all witnesses they question and staging suicide scenes. Also, pharma companies don't need to worry about bad drugs as "rich" people who can afford their drug can also afford medical care, but why they wouldn't just sue the pants off big pharma seems ignored. Also, if a single woman in a submarine can manufacture enough drugs to save small, poor countries from health care disasters, it begs the question why poor countries can't establish their own manufacturing facilities in submarines. Another bizarre aspect to this society is that at some point, intelligent robots were emancipated or could be become "autonomous", but at the same time, in some wired way it made sense that if robots could be autonomous, then humans could also become indentured as slaves to be bought and sold. This creates situations where humans are bought and sold for cheap labor, while robots can earn PhDs. Lastly, a lack of inside knowledge on the drug development process produces a situation where the mechanism of action of a dangerous drug is studied, an antidote is fashioned, tested on one mouse, and then the formula uploaded for doctors in hospitals to use in only five days.

Between the questionable ethics of making drugs for recreational abuse to support making life-saving drugs and robots struggling with gender identity issues and romantic feelings, the tale feels like an artificial world that doesn't quite make enough sense to exist. There is no attempt to offer how this transition occurred.

The narration is reasonably good, but with barely adequate character, especially gender discrimination making following conversations difficult at times.

Lovely Out-There Scifi Exploration

This book is pretty out-there. It hits so many of the major scifi themes: personhood, identity, what it is to be human, dystopia, Corporatocracy, intellectual property/ownership. It even goes a step further and explores sexual identity/sexuality between human and non-human sentience. It reminds me of a Neal Stephenson novel if it was ghost-written by a person who was actually good at characterization. And more concise. I love Stephenson's work, and this is just as "hard" a scifi, but Newitz makes much more *real* characters.

Jennifer Ikeda does a fine job narrating, and I'm pleased with her performance.

Non-synthetic, gritty Futurism at its best.

Being a huge sci-fi and cyberpunk genre fan, I was pleasantly surprised but this wasn't yet another recycled attempt at world-building. the authors knowledge of Biotech, military technology, and basic programming theory kept the story fresh without bogging down in the minutiae. You can invest yourself in the characters quickly, and easily imagine yourself in this not so distant world where everything is for sale, even your soul, but the only real winners are those with privilege. Race, human-trafficking, intellectual property, identity and free-will are just a few of the themes expertly crafted by this talented writer. I look forward to seeing more work by this author.

This should have won the Nebula Award!

This book was a nebula-award nominee for 2018. It should have won!! The characters and story and environment all add up to the most compelling debut novel in years.

Smart, Crisp, Vivid Sci-Fi

Neal Stephenson & William Gibson recommend this book. That may be all you need to know.
I only found out after finishing it that this is Annalee Newitz's first novel - & I really hope there are more to come! A crackling, full-colour future is built before your eyes that propels a fascinating story, full of memorable characters. Jennifer Ikeda's narration is excellent, and very much immersed me in the story.