Service Model

Audiobook

English language

Published June 4, 2024 by McMillan Audio.

ISBN:
978-1-250-35121-0
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4 stars (1 review)

To fix the world they must first break it, further. Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away. Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.

7 editions

The story of a robot's journey during the end of the world.

4 stars

An entertaining and thoughtful book about the end of the world as we know it and a robot who wanders through it and comes out at the end with, perhaps, a way to remake the world to be better. The story is full of SFF and literary allusions to writers and situations, especially Asimov's positronic robot stories, as well as other writers like Kafka, Orwell, Borges and Dante.

Charles is a robot valet and, as the story begin, murders his master. He suspects a malfunction and leaves the mansion to return to a central service for decommissioning. During the journey, we see the world through his eyes, and it is a world that has decayed and gone to waste, with no humans to be seen, but lots of robots, all waiting for confirming instructions from humans that never come.

His journey is in vain, for other robots are waiting before …