Autonomous - Book Review

Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz, is a SF novel that takes place more than a century in the future, where bio-tech, autonomous robots with full human rights and 3D/tissue/everything printers are everywhere.

And in a pretty common turn of events, evil corporations have taken over the world. Sure, this is overused, but is it hard to see it happening as things are going right now?

I really liked the tech on this novel. While most of it isn't really new in SF, it was applied very well, and there was so much of it that the world felt like a nice, integrated dystopian mess. The story was nice, particularly the weird tale of the bot just coming off training and going on its first mission.

As silly detail picking, seems pretty bizarre to have all that bio-tech and full AI, and yet not have algorithms for expression detection when those are available right now to a pretty good level...

I was a bit surprised that the review ratings weren't higher - but I guess I like weird tech more than most. I'm not a big fan of the anti-capitalist thing going on, but it is not too hard to believe this coming true in the time frame of the book.

I was a bit surprised when I saw the author photo and realized I've seen her work hundreds of times over the years on the web.

Overall, strongly recommended.

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