Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Summary from NetGalley:
To fix the world they must first break it, further.
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.
When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away.
Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.
Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.
Arc provided by Tor Publishing Group via NetGalley for an honest review.
Confession:
This was a very interesting and thought provoking novel. It is at its core a buddy road trip where the two main characters are searching for purpose and answers to their existence while trying to discover what has really happened to the world.
Uncharles is a robot that is meant to serve humans. Once his ‘job’ with his current master comes to an end, he goes on a journey to find another to serve. But there are barely any humans left, and the few he finds do not need a servant. Uncharles, unlike most of the other robots is able to break out of his programing, or at least interpret it in such a way that allows him to adapt to the situations he finds himself in. He feels like a robot that is self aware and an determine his fate within the confines of his programing. But in the end he is a product of his creators. I liked Uncharles, but he did lack a little in personality and wasn’t a particularly compelling character, especially towards the end.
On his journey, Uncharles meets the Wonk, a fellow wanderer who often questions what Uncharles is doing and why. Uncharles finds the Wonk to be an unusual robot with lots of defective programming. I enjoyed Wonk quite a bit, she often had really good questions for Uncharles and pushed him to try and become self aware. There was certainly more to the Wonk that as a reader you will pick up on, although Uncharles never really does.
This is very much a plot driven story. On their journey Uncharles and Wonk meet many other barely functioning robots who are caught up in endless programming loops trying to perform the tasks that were set up by their human programmers. Many of these tasks no longer really exist. It was funny and yet very sad at the same time. There were quite a few amusing instances were the robot dialogue ended up in an endless loop, sort of like those computerized phone calls that we all hate. The Librarians they meet on their journey were also an interesting group in their interpretation of how to preserve human knowledge.
The writing was amazingly well done. I could easily imagine the devastation that surround our travelers on their journey. The dialogue was also top notch, and that was were most of the humor of the story came out. This story very much reminded me of the play, Waiting for Godot, but instead of the two characters waiting for Godot, these two go out in search of him. They want Godot to have all of the answers to their questions about what happened. The pacing was a bit slow, and things did get a bit repetitive towards the end. The ending was different than I thought it would be, and it felt a bit muddled as well. The answer to what really happened to the world also felt unfinished.
This was my first book by this author and I could certainly see why he is so popular. His writing is suburb and at least in this case really made me think. This existential journey through a post apocalyptic wasteland is one you won’t soon forget.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 