Friday (1982) [/]
Feb 26 2024
Robert A Heinlein's Friday is a future Earth novel set in the latter half of the 21st century. The main protagonist is Friday, an Artificial Person who can unerringly pass for human and is employed as a specialized courier for a private spy/merc organization.
After her personal life is turned upside down when she reveals her AP-ness to her New Zealand "family" and they reject her Friday is then caught up in Red Thursday, a worldwide string of assassinations that destabilizes governments and causes all nations to close their borders. About half the book is Friday trying to get back to her organization while meeting people and touring North America, which is now a bunch of balkanized small countries (e.g. Quebec is independent, California is independent, Chicago and the central states are their own thing).
Once she's back home another shock as her organization is shut down. With nothing better to do with her life she takes a hazardous assignment off-world and we get a bit more info on the various colonies. Meanwhile Friday has a last challenge in escaping from her employers once she realizes that she's have to be eliminated to keep her package secret from ever being revealed...
Everything is told in first person from Fridays POV but as memoirs she's writing a couple of decades later and based on notes she made at the time. There are a few larger events that she narrates because she found out later but for the most part it's a lot of Friday stumbling about with little information.
Besides this being a sort of tour of the world the other main theme is Friday's humanity. She doesn't consider herself human and a lot of things that human she thinks she does because she's imitating. It's not until after the story in her two decades later epilogue that she admits that it doesn't matter whether or not she thinks of herself as human as what other people think and how they treat her.
I listened to an audiobook of this novel in the mid 1980's and it was quite exciting to a young teenager hearing a woman narrating her story -- and it's not like there's really any sex but Friday does a lot of kissing of both sexes so that was something. Reading it for the first time it's kind of funny how much Heinlein makes fun of liberals and taxes and governments.
For the most part a readable novel with an interesting protagonist. It is a bit archaic for today's audience and Friday writes colloquially for her time and that also did not age well. Still, a story I still like and a story that updated would be cool to read or see on tv or film.
After her personal life is turned upside down when she reveals her AP-ness to her New Zealand "family" and they reject her Friday is then caught up in Red Thursday, a worldwide string of assassinations that destabilizes governments and causes all nations to close their borders. About half the book is Friday trying to get back to her organization while meeting people and touring North America, which is now a bunch of balkanized small countries (e.g. Quebec is independent, California is independent, Chicago and the central states are their own thing).
Once she's back home another shock as her organization is shut down. With nothing better to do with her life she takes a hazardous assignment off-world and we get a bit more info on the various colonies. Meanwhile Friday has a last challenge in escaping from her employers once she realizes that she's have to be eliminated to keep her package secret from ever being revealed...
Everything is told in first person from Fridays POV but as memoirs she's writing a couple of decades later and based on notes she made at the time. There are a few larger events that she narrates because she found out later but for the most part it's a lot of Friday stumbling about with little information.
Besides this being a sort of tour of the world the other main theme is Friday's humanity. She doesn't consider herself human and a lot of things that human she thinks she does because she's imitating. It's not until after the story in her two decades later epilogue that she admits that it doesn't matter whether or not she thinks of herself as human as what other people think and how they treat her.
I listened to an audiobook of this novel in the mid 1980's and it was quite exciting to a young teenager hearing a woman narrating her story -- and it's not like there's really any sex but Friday does a lot of kissing of both sexes so that was something. Reading it for the first time it's kind of funny how much Heinlein makes fun of liberals and taxes and governments.
For the most part a readable novel with an interesting protagonist. It is a bit archaic for today's audience and Friday writes colloquially for her time and that also did not age well. Still, a story I still like and a story that updated would be cool to read or see on tv or film.