Saturn's Children
a space opera
by Charles Stross · first published 2008
48% recommend52% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Inventive space opera in which every character is an AI after humans die out, built on the economics of a post-human society, including autonomous corporations, interstellar finance and space accountancy pirates.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct—leaving only androids behind. Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.
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Charles Stross incorporates economics into a lot of his writing. His two related novels Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood are all about the economics of a post-human society. The latter of the two has a really interesting take on crypto-currency. His Merchant Princes series is all about how a dimensional…
on “The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction” ↗…video form always has to be space opera, alien invasions and so on? If we are going to go for special effects let's not waste them on more space cowboys. Let's have Charlie Stross's Accelerando and Saturn's Children or Ken McLeod's Sky Road, etc.
on “Why did science fiction stop moving forward?” ↗> If an entire Sci-fi continuity were limited to just Sol and Alpha Centauri, this by itself would constitute an inexhaustible number of potential settings. "Saturn's Children" by Charles Stross is a good one (unfortunately he had to do away with humans to keep the space opera physically realistic).
on “Moons of all the planets in our solar system” ↗I'm just hopping in to recommend "Saturn's Children" by Stross, which this comment has reminded me of. AI are created by building immortal human brain simulations, raising them, then cloning the results. Humans are not able to upload and eventually go…
on “Depp to Star as a Supercomputer in Christopher Nolan Film About the Singularity” ↗Saturn's Children was pretty good. From what I've heard, everything by Charles Stross is worth reading.
on “The incorporated woman” ↗…'anything that looks vaguely technical in a story'. SF, especially, hard SF, has always tackled grown up questions. Here are a few I have recently re-read: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Saturn's Children by Charles Stross, Engines Of Light by Ken McLeod, 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke, Robots of Dawn, etc. by Isaac Asimov.
on “Adults' obsession with science fiction causing society to become infantilised” ↗A novel that qualifies as hard SF in which every character is an AI? Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross. 100% not what you have in mind, though. (You'll enjoy it, though.) OTOH, I always find "Hard SF" a self-defeating category. I mean, anything with humans living on a different planet…
on “Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels?” ↗C. Stross - Saturn's Children. https://www.amazon.com/Saturns-Children-Freyaverse-Charles-S...
on “A Lonely Universe” ↗…concept-dense books you'll read from the period, but unlike lots of scifi lit stross wrote a very solid story that's worth reading in it's own right. Another good book by Stross that doesn't get much love is Saturn's Children. it has the same inventivness and story-telling prowess. the most outrageous elements of the story are the very glue that make the whole thing more tractable.
on “Accelerando (2005)” ↗One way interstellar colonies could finance themselves, including no-faster-than-light financial systems is explored in Charles Stross' Saturn's Children books. Also it has space accountancy pirates.
on “Starship will attempt a launch this weekend” ↗You should read Accelerando and the Saturn's Children books by Charles Stross if autonomous corporate structures are your thing.
on “How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business” ↗My favourite Stross books are "Saturn's Children", "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise" in that order, to name some of his other books. "Neptune's Breed" is the sequel to "Saturn's Children". For "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise", I really enjoyed…
on “The pivot” ↗Echoing others, Reynolds (House of Suns, Pushing Ice, the Revelation Space series), Stross (Accelerando, Glasshouse, and Saturn's Children/Neptune's Brood are my favorites), and Rajaniemi (the Quantum Thief trilogy) scratch roughly the same itch for me.
on “Accelerando (2005)” ↗…demographic transition, a birth rate below replacement rate, for a few centuries. https://www.bohemiandrive.com/npwil - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life (not a spoiler, that's chapter 1, panelset 2). Saturn's Children by Charles Stross might also be appropriate (It's an especially odd book to read immediately after Friday - the "I recognize that twist... oh, it twisted ... that way?").
on “Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards” ↗…insane, the story is excellent, and the writing tops if off. It works surprisingly well. I'm a big fan of Charles Stross. Accelerando and Glasshouse are definitively very good. But I'll go and recommend "Saturn's Children". It's more his style: Very much like Tchaikovsky, his premises are insanely ridiculous and almost outrageous, but perfectly coherent. His work is so much fun! It's a blast to read through his novels.
on “Science Fiction Books Everyone Should Read” ↗