 "No TGIF Here" | 2008-02-03 |
| - Reviewed By rclothier |
Unlike most SF readers, I have never been a Heinlein fan. I hadn't read him since being scared off by "Time Enough for Love" 20 years ago. But hey, I thought, I'm older now, I should give RAH a second chance. I'm sad to report, though, that Friday did nothing to sway my opinion.
The main problem with Friday (the novel) is that it lacks a coherent story line. Friday (the character) is an artificial person, a kick-*ss courier for a shadowy organization run by "The Boss." When the book starts, she is being chased by enemies after delivering a package. So, you think, this will be a SF espionage novel; Friday will battle the enemy organization, solve some mysteries, save the day. But no, we never discover what her mission was about, or who the men chasing her were, or why. She retreats to the headquarters of her organization, and you think, ah ha, this will be an Alias type story; we'll find out who the Boss is, what his group does, go on dangerous missions. But no, the Boss dies and the organization disbands. Before dying, he tells her she is a latent genius, and initiates an intensive education. Friday responds, and begins to unravel sinister connections in current events. So, she'll figure out who is behind the recent world-wide wave of violence and take him down, right? No, she has to quit when the Boss dies, and that storyline comes to nothing.
And so it continues throughout the book. Instead of being a head-banging agent, Friday is more like a pinball, bopping around Earth and beyond without direction or purpose. She goes here, goes there, perhaps has a minor fight or scrape, meets people, has consequence free sex with them, then moves on. I'm not offended by the never-ending sex, just annoyed by it. It serves no purpose to the story. In fact, there's no point to the book that I can see, other than promoting some of Heinlein's pet ideas: free love is great, governments are stupid, corporations actually run the world. And I'm sorry, the dialog is kitschy at best. He must have used the word "silly" a hundred times.
Friday did nothing to win me over to Heinlein. If you're looking for an entertaining read, I suggest you look elsewhere.
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 "Revisiting Friday" | 2007-10-12 |
| - Reviewed By bookreader |
I first gave Friday an admittedly cursory reading nearly twenty years ago and set it aside unfinished. In retrospect, that has turned out to have been a bit of good luck.
Returning to it recently gave me the opportunity to once again experience Heinlein's voice in previously unread material. Although this isn't as clear and focused as Heinlein's best work, it is good solid read. |
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| "Heinlein, Sex, and a Pretty Cyborg" | 2007-10-10 |
| - Reviewed By toddincharge |
Hey, what more do you need? Listen, this is not going to win any Hugo awards, but it is a fun, enjoyable futuristic adventure through Heinlein's wild imagination. A rollicking Bond-like female cyborg protagonist loves and kills her way through a typically Heinleinian future, replete with rogues, double agents, robots, despotic leaders, and that rare good human.
Any book that can advertise with a straight face that it was Playboy Book Club's alternate selection of the month can't be all bad. |
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 "Not Free SF Reader" | 2007-09-03 |
| - Reviewed By bluetyson |
This book is bad in just so many ways. By far the worst thing he ever came up with. Just horrible. 'What if I had a super girl android servant I could send on missions, and she loved sex whenever and
however, and I could get lots of the details afterwards.'
If you want something that is similar, but actually decent, try Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kresnov series, Crossover, Breakaway, Killswitch.
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 "Everything you could want in a book and more" | 2007-04-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A6J1T3LUC1CQE |
I came across the paperback version of this book in the $1 bin of a thrift store and was surprised I hadn't heard of it before. I thought this might have been a rare dud in his career, but thankfully, I was wrong. This could be considered a sequel to his novella "Gulf", and actually features Kettle Belly Bailey, and makes reference to Joe and Gail, the main protagonists in Gulf.
Within the first chapter of the book, you realize that this is not a typical Heinlein book. The primary character, Friday, is a young, artificially created human female. A departure for him considering most of his stories are from the point of view of young adolencent males. A few of the early events in the book will give some readers a shock (read it and you'll understand why), but shortly after, the book takes off into a typical Heinlein story arc of action and adventure.
Heinlein explores several subjects in this book ranging from communal marriage, overt racism, authoritarianism, genetic engineering, and sexual promiscuity.
Overall, a very good book and worth well more than the $1 I paid for it |
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| "Un-Person or Super-Person?" | 2007-01-31 |
| - Reviewed By hyperpat |
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)
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 "An audiobook review" | 2007-01-10 |
| - Reviewed By mt_healthy_mountaineer |
Many years ago, in the early 80s, I was a devoted reader of all things Heinlein. Somewhere along the way I guess I lost interest(I don't remember), but I found this audiobook version of "Friday" and thought I'd re-live the old days a bit.
From the product description on the back of the box I did not remember having read the book, but soon enough, I vaguely remembered the plot a bit. So, how was it re-visiting Heinlein? It was okay. The storyline was not nearly as interesting as the backdrop (a fragmented United States - how I'd love to see a short history of this vision of earth plus a short description of the technology - Heinlein accurately describes the internet - not bad for 1982).
Friday is a genetically modified human being created from bits and pieces from all around the world. She lives in a remarkably open society that openly discriminates agains such Artificial People (APs). Heinlein builds the book on the themes of wanting to belong and being rejected for things that you cannot control.
Heinlein's free love world (nearly sex-crazed) is, in my mind, a bit of wishful thinking on the part of Heinlein. However, I'll give him his due - the multiple-partner marriages are a controversial idea to toss out there - and part of the job of a good sci-fi writer is to toss out new ideas and cause some discussion.
Overall, I was not over-impressed with my audiobook version of "Friday". Part of it has to do with the fact that it is abridged - a fact that is nearly hidden on the back of the packaging. The story suffered from the abridgement. Secondly, the choice of reader was disconcerting. She was very British and she never shook that accent, no matter where the action was taking place. Sometimes that worked out well, but usually it was jarring to hear residents of New Zealand, Winnepeg, Southern California and Vicksburg, Mississippi speaking with any number of British accents (sometimes Cockney, even!).
I give this audiobook version of "Friday" a grade of C+. |
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| "Friday" | 2006-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2HI2QHW9T36BX |
| I have read almost of Robert A Heinlein's titles and have been so absorbed that I have reread them many times each. |
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| "Favorite Heinlein of all time" | 2006-09-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3JOODBOOT18VO |
I admit it. I'm a Heinlein junkie. I'm not sure if there is a rehab or a self-help group out there for me, but even if there was one, I'm not sure if I would even want to go to it. It's Heinlein after all! I've read everything from his lesser-known earlier works like "Orphans in the Sky", to his Juveniles like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", to his Lazarus Long series, even is famous "Stranger in a Strange Land", to even his non-fiction work. And although I love them all, I must say, that Friday is undisputedly my favorite.
What makes Friday so alluring? It is a tale of acceptance and belonging and what is the human soul. It is a story of an "artificial person", Friday Jones, whose "mother was a test tube, and her father a knife". She is a professional courier (that is to say, she is a carrier pigeon for top-secret documents and important information), who seems to be normal and well adjusted in every way. However, underneath her cheerful and charming exterior lays a frightened little girl who seeks acceptance in the most desperate ways, but fails in her quest to find a family. During these chronicles, she discovers many things about herself. Small, personal bits of information, a strength and resourcefulness that she never knew she had. Eventually, she finds a family and as she says, she finally "belongs".
The story is quite simple, so why is this story so spellbinding?
Besides the beautiful blend of technology, history, and characterization, there is also a cohesive story line as well as a thrilling plot. Friday asks the age-old question, what is a soul? What makes a human, a person? Although she is beautiful, accomplished and talented, once she reveals that she is an AP, she is outcast and sneered at. She is considered less then a human, because she was not born, but created.
This question has undoubtedly been raised in the works of the Grand Masters of science fiction. Asimov took a mechanical point of view in "The Bicentennial Man". Phillip Dick echoed Friday, and the concept of APs in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" with the plight of the Replicates. So why does Friday tug at me so?
Because it is told from the human point of view. With the exception of Friday's superhuman speed and strength, she could be very well be anyone. She has the same fears and desires, and her childlike charm and insecurity makes her all the more human.
Her quest to find a family and for acceptance is a long and winding one. She is not on a crusade to change the world, nor to battle the great evil of prejudice and racism, but to find her niche in the world. Her caring and nurturing nature is juxtaposed with her lethal skills, giving her the dimension that is necessary for us to follow her story.
Friday makes us care about her trials, and her hurts become ours. And as a result, makes us ask ourselves what defines us as human, and feel the anguish at discrimination.
It is the ability to not only inflame, but also to soothe, that makes Friday so memorable.
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| "I Could Fall In Love With This Gal..." | 2006-01-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1QK50LH28Y6LZ |
Heinlein has long been one of my favorite authors, and I was pleased that "Friday" didn't let me down.
"Friday" is an artificial person. She was bred in a laboratory from the finest genetic material available, and she works for a free-lance intelligence agency as one of their top couriers. Raised to believe she is less-than-human, Friday is constantly assaulted by "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", driven from situation to situation in an adventure that is as much a tale of her discovering her worth as a human as it is a futuristic spy thriller.
My wife takes exception to a couple of items about how "the Dean of Science Fiction" wrote his women, at least in this case. She (my better half) feels that Friday doesn't react as a real woman would to some situations... well, one in particular. Personally, I think he created a character that is interesting, often charming, professionally tough-as-nails, emotionally vulnerable, and quite lovable. And given the premise of her origins, I find I can accept how Friday behaves. (Then, I'm not a woman.)
Heinlein has created a character that the reader can not only cheer but empathise with... highly appealing on a number of levels.
I can re-read this novel every year or two and still be just as effected as the very first time. It's a story that feels like visiting an old friend. That's good writing. |
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