Service Model

*Free e-book ARC made available by the publisher through Edelweiss Plus - thank you!*

A robot valet kills his master, and then when the (robot) police force doesn't arrest him, he is given the task of going to Diagnostics to figure out what is wrong with him. There, he meets a decidedly defective robot called "the Wonk" who encourages him to leave (Diagnostics is completely backed up and can't do anything until a human with enough authority allows them to handle their backlog) and find free will. Reluctantly, the robot now called Uncharles ventures into the wide world to find his purpose.

A post-apocalyptic tale filled with absurdity and dark humor, Service Model explores what might happen if humans were to imperfectly program their show more robotic "helpers" and then not be present to override the logical steps they all would take with that programming. Turns out, robots might have just as many problems as we do. As bleak as much of the story is - and the human reader will pick up on implications that Uncharles does not, or in some cases simply accepts as a thing that is without weighing a moral judgment - there are some very funny moments, breaking of the fourth wall with comments about Uncharles and the Wonk taking a hero's journey and lots of literary references, and a glimmer of hope for the future. It's definitely the kind of book that leaves you wanting to talk about it with a fellow reader. show less

Beware of AIs

This is a dark, absurd, sarcastic, and clever book. I really liked the names of the headings – KR15-T, K4FK-R, 4W-L, 80RH-5, D4NT-A. Delicious! It’s full of philosophical, religious, and literary references.

Charles is a top-of-the-line robot valet. He has also just killed his Master with a razor. (Who would want to let a robot shave them?) Charles doesn’t understand how it could have happened. The next step is to check task lists and try to do things outside the usual routine. This is funny in a very morbid way.
”And really, Master did so little when alive that being dead should barely make a ripple in his schedule.”

It becomes increasingly obvious that something is very wrong with this universe. Charles needs to show more leave his manor and get to Diagnostics. The name needs to be left behind, so eventually, Uncharles it is. Outside, things get even more dysfunctional, dystopian, and indeed, kafkaesque. And where are all the humans?
Tchaikovsky gives his readers a robot odyssey, a fable dripping with sarcasm, and what turns out to be a very humane book. The sci-fi reader in me had a million questions about the world building, but the fable structure is what makes this novel work.
I loved Uncharles, I loved Wonk. I could have had more chapters with just them talking.
The ending is nice :)

A few more quotes:

”Around the walls at ground level Uncharles saw a vast and complex reading device, studded with a thousand different sockets, arms, jacks, and ports, a true testament to humanity’s utter refusal to ever consider cross-medium compatibility.”

”We can hold far more than six contradictory ideas in our data banks before breakfast.”

”He didn’t want to be integral to the final collapse of human civilization. It felt like a lot of responsibility for a valet.” show less

After murdering his master, Charles, the robot valet, ends up out of his manor house with a new name - Uncharles- searching-wandering-exploring-learning. At first, he wants to be fixed, but then he just wants to find a new place to “fulfill his purpose”.

What I really liked about this book: (1) exploring the robot viewpoint, seeing the world through the lens of logic and algorithms, and what events might look like without our human context, (2) considering a possible human-robot landscape that leads to a collapse of civilization, (3) the narration was excellent in the audiobook.

Charles (soon to be renamed Uncharles) is a robot valet in a decaying manor, in a decaying world. For reasons unknown, he slits his master's throat one day while shaving him and is forced to go out into the world to find Diagnostics, get fixed, and hopefully find new employment. Along the way, he meets another defective "robot," The Wonk, who tells him he's been infected with the Protagonist Virus, something that supposedly lets robots behave outside of the ways they were programmed.

I went into this expecting to love it. I like robots, I like sci-fi. I had never previously read one of the Tchaikovsky's books, but I'd seen reviews that left me thinking I should try some of his stuff one day. There was a good amount of absurdist humor at show more the beginning of this, and I was prepared to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the story of Uncharles and The Wonk turned out to be a tedious and excruciating journey that led to a reasonable enough ending, but not one good enough to justify the amount of work required to get there. I got the impression that parts of this book were supposed to be funny in a "ha, ha, these robots are so ridiculous" Wodehousian way. Instead, it was mostly frustrating and increasingly horrific.

I generally like dark humor. Initially, I enjoyed the absurdity of the "murder mystery" this started off with. Charles knew he'd killed his master, called the police, and admitted it to them. However, the police who arrived were robots that, just like Charles, had a very specific way they were programmed to do things. When a murder happened, you were supposed to look for clues and solve the crime - it doesn't matter if the murderer is repeatedly confessing.

I just got so tired of this, and nothing about it (the characters, the world, etc.) truly made me want to keep reading despite the frustrating moments. I powered my way through this as best I could, and then didn't even feel like the effort was worthwhile. Even the Librarians were more of a disappointment than anything. There were kernels of good ideas here, but the execution was utterly exhausting.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

In Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky has abandoned stories about uplifted bugs and other critters for an Asimovian robot story in which the only bugs are in the software. Our protagonist, for the moment, called Charles, is a robotic valet in a large manor house. One morning, while shaving his old master, he unaccountably cuts his throat. His attempts to correct his programming and find a new job send him on a journey through a dysfunctional, collapsing society inhabited by more broken robots than people. Despite his initial homicide, Charles is a loveably innocent character. The story's literary roots are as much Candide and Waiting for Godot as I, Robot and The Caves of Steel. Recommended.

I really enjoyed walking to the stars in the company of the writer so I asked him to read me another one of his. And he did. This was a very different one, still quite dark but most funny. You just cannot stop laughing at us humans even though most of us are long gone. Great stuff but a bit too merry for me. The central focus of all that laughter is our present day fear of artificial intelligence. The point is very clear - you fear the wrong stuff. Just look in the mirror and there you see the source of all fears.

In his latest novel Adrian Tchaikovsky takes us to the dawn of a post-human society in the not so far future. Charles is the titular service model, a robotic valet who’s been in the service of the sole human inhabitant of a large mansion for a long time, but one morning he breaks out of long consolidated (and often pointless) routines by murdering his master.
He has no recollection of the event nor the reasons for this act, so he’s dismissed from duty and sent to a government Diagnostics department.

This starts the protagonist’s personal quest to find the motive of his inexplicable behaviour and a the search of a new role in a society that does not seem to have a need for a specialised valet anymore.

He’s joined by the Wonk, a show more strange traveller keen to help Un-Charles (as the protagonist's name was tied to his former job) but with an agenda of their own, and together they discover many aspects of the new robotic society that’s emerging from the ruins of the human world.

This is an original, funny and engaging story of Artificial Intelligence based societies and one’s quest for purpose in the face of apparently insurmountable odds; another award-worthy novel from this prolific author which I wholeheartedly recommend to any lovers of thought-provoking speculative fiction.

Note: I received this book for free as an ARC from #NetGalley but the opinions above are mine and unbiased. show less