CHARLES STROSS takes us to a future where the 鈥減eople鈥� are the robots left behind 200 years after the last humans died. Although their bodies are robotic, their minds are partly human, with our heritage of ambitions, joys and troubles. Freed from the demands of supporting organic life, they roam from Mercury to in spaceships so claustrophobic they make today鈥檚 economy-class aircraft seem like luxury liners.
It has the hallmark of a wild and darkly playful imagination: a city that moves on rails to stay perpetually in the twilight zone of Mercury, with the heroine tied to the rails so that she must wriggle loose before the city crushes her. On the way, Stross tosses out ideas aplenty. Since his robots know they were created by humans, for example, they consider evolution heretical. It isn鈥檛 a relaxing bedtime read, but it is the sort of mind-expanding adventure that made 鈥渉ard鈥� science fiction famous. Highly recommended.
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Saturn鈥檚 Children
Orbit/Ace