Friday (Paperback)

The protagonist here is an Artificial Person (AP) named Friday Jones, who works as a courier for the organization headed up by Hartley 'Kettle Belly' Baldwin (last seen in the 1940 short stort 'Gulf'). Friday's very cool all around but she has a little self-esteem problem owing to the fact that much of the world thinks APs aren't genuinely human.

Well, of _course_ they are; they're genetically engineered to be able to outperform us ordinary mortals in strength, speed, and intelligence, but they're human (genetically and otherwise) all the same. And that's really the heart of this novel -- Friday's long and sometimes excruciating journey to _belonging_. (In this respect, the novel very nicely _undoes_ all of the Uebermensch crap Heinlein wrote in the early 1940s.)

That's the heart, but the novel has a couple of spots on its soul. As other readers have noted, Friday's response to her rape (and her rapist) is more than a little jarring, and I don't think it's possible to explain it away as a result of her upbringing and genetic enhancements. And I could have lived without the several pages of astrogation and starcharts (although I do enjoy Heinlein's little doodle of a centaur).

The sequence of events starts off well enough, but it sort of rambles and meanders. Oh, well; most of it is interesting, anyway, although the secret-agent intrigue peters out partway through. And there are memorable characters -- nothing quite at the level of the Long family, mind you, but still some pretty interesting people.

Plus there's some extremely cool stuff in the background. Heinlein the prognosticator scores especially well here, creating a fictional analogue of the Internet (in 1982) and setting his tale against a backdrop of corporate infighting and political Balkanization that is almost never, but should be, credited in histories of cyberpunk.

I like it -- at least well enough to reread it fairly often. I wouldn't recommend starting with it if you're new to Heinlein, though.

After I overcome my aversion to Friday's personality, I found myself strangely compelled by Friday's world. While this novel is by NO means Heinlein's best, I was hooked anyway. Friday is a sympathetic character. I loved her relationship with boss, her friends, and comrades in arms. My only disappointment in this book, was I felt that Friday's love interest Percival was not very well developed. I also felt, that Friday failed to grow as a character and there were parts where Friday seemed to wander from relationship to relationship without much point. (I would've much preferred Friday have a few successful relationships rather than the DOZENS, which seemed to be portrayed).

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. Friday was a compelling character whose life and story was well worth listening too. Especially after the first few chapters. Word of caution, however: because of graphic violence, and rampant sexuality I would NOT recommend for sensitive or young readers.