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Autonomous

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Autonomous

By: Annalee Newitz
Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
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About this listen

Winner of the 2018 LAMBDA Award for SFF.

Shortlisted for The Nebula Award 2018.

Shortlisted for The Locus Award for Best Debut 2018.

Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap medicines for those who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.

Hot on her trail is an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understands.

And underlying it all is one fundamental question: is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

©2017 Annalee Newitz (P)2018 Little, Brown Book Group Cyberpunk Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction

Critic reviews

"Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet." (Neal Stephenson)
"Something genuinely and thrillingly new." (William Gibson)

"Holy hell. Autonomous is remarkable." (Lauren Beukes)
All stars
Most relevant
This was really entertaining. The book contains some really interesting ideas and is performed well.

Really good!

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At times I really engaged with this book and was excited to see how it developed then the author repeated what they had done previously and tried to contextualise the burgeoning sexual desire of Elias and Paladin, this was extremely jarring and took me out of the story again and again and more importantly unnecessary to the plot, the narration was excellent and I would listen to her again but I doubt I would give this author a second try in the future

Could have been so much better

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The ham-fisted plot and plenty of trite lines undermine a good performance. Hard work overall

Great performance pity about the plot

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The story was great too, but I loved how the narrator brought each character to life.

outstanding vocal performance

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Firstly, I’m very hesitant to give full 5 star reviews, not because a work is undeserving, but because more often than not, such a review seems complacent. Here, however, it is fully deserved.

Cyberpunk has long been one of my favourite genres, but in many aspects it is dated; even the more modern works cling to themes that originated from the time period of The Red Scare. Autonomous breathes fresh life into an old and somewhat lost genre, it smooths over many of the failings of cyberpunk in the modern age —Immense emphasis on soviet relations, borderline-fetishisation of Japanese technology and culture— and contributes a much more level headed imagining of cybernetics/body modifications, and artificial intelligence.

Autonomous maintains many of the core facets of cyberpunk, the setting is largely unmistakably a capitalist dystopia, but it has an understanding that throughout human history, totalitarian states have been resisted, successfully or not, and if not by the masses then by smaller collectives and individuals. One of my favourite things about Autonomous is that it shows that resistance is deeply personal, and it differs between everyone, there is more than one way to resist: one of the duality’s of the book is somewhat of an ongoing debate between piracy, breaking copyright law, and open source projects, refusing copyright law.

Perhaps my only complaint is that Newitz simply left me wanting more, Autonomous is a people-first book, it’s main purpose is to tell a story through its characters, and I would have liked to see more of the world than we did, the worldbuilding in many departments —such as cybernetics— is only grazed upon, and Newitz has been innovative enough I’d have liked to see these things expanded upon.

Many reviews here complain that there is an unnecessary focus on sex. Whether or not it is necessary is personal interpretation, but to me it simply reads as another aspect in which Autonomous asserts itself a spiritual successor to Cyberpunk. Escapism has always been a key part of cyberpunk, drugs, drink, sexuality, and this book certainly explored both sexuality and chemical escapism. However, I wouldn’t call it unnecessary, in fact I feel that the small explorations into robotic romance, sexuality, and gender were very insightful and interesting.

As well as this, the narration was stellar, and Ikeda quickly became a favourite narrator of mine. For their performance of this book, I will likely be investigating other words in their catalogue. The speech was clear, unfaltering, and well acted.

Suffice it to say, Autonomous, when I first read it a couple of years ago quickly became a modern favourite of mine, and since having read the book again, this time with the audiobook, I am far from disappointed. The story was as vivid and innovative as I remember, with the delightful addition of Ikeda’s performance.

Post-Millennium Cyberpunk

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