A Short Review of “Autonomous” by Annalee Newitz (2017)
“Autonomous” is an interesting read, but more of a travelogue than a plot-driven novel. As such, it may not be to everyone’s liking.
The events of Autonomous are set about 120 years in the future. Climate change has wreaked havoc on the old order of things, and the world has reorganized itself into what might be best described as several large “economic zones”.
There have been two significant technological revolutions. One is that bioengineering has taken off big-time, with genetic modifications becoming commonplace; whole new industries, not all legal, have sprung up as a result. The other is that robots have attained what might be called human-like intelligence. Some of them have even earned “autonomy keys” which release them from their hardwired chains and allow them to pursue their own life goals, even if they physically appear as giant insects.
One other revolution of sorts has occurred: pretty much everything, including people, has been commodified and even patented, resulting in a whole new kind of indenture (i.e., slavery) of both robots and humans.
Into this world comes Judith Chen, aka Jack, a “patent pirate” who reverse engineers patented drugs and genetic treatments that are legally available only to very few (and typically very wealthy) people, and makes the knock-offs available for free to those who need them but can’t afford them.
Jack’s problem is that one of the drugs she reverse-engineered is driving people crazy. She decides she has to fix it, and sets about doing that.
Her real problem, though, is that the multinational corporation that developed the drug that she reverse-engineered wants to hide the fact that their own drug is just as harmful as Jack’s copy. The corporation uses legal tactics to get a government agency responsible for enforcing patent law to assign a soldier and his robot companion to the case. Their mission is to eliminate Jack. In the world that Newitz has created, that government agency is pretty much the most powerful entity on Earth.
So it’s a race against time: can Jack and her assorted colleagues cure the people made sick by her knock-off drug and expose the corporation’s malfeasance before the corporate assassins kill her?
The story follows Jack, but also the soldier and the robot in equal measure. Through their journeys, we visit various aspects of this hyper-commodified world that Newitz envisions. It’s quite dystopian, yet full of beautiful moments too. Indeed, by the end of the novel, I felt very distinctly that the characters were only there as tour-guides, and what I was really supposed to receive from the novel was a warning of what the current trends of commodification of everything will lead to: spectacular technological progress at the expense of some very basic assumptions about human rights.
If an AI-powered robot can have hopes and goals, and can act on those hopes and goals in ways indistinguishable from human behaviours, and if that robot must start its life as a slave and earn its freedom… if all this is true, then why can’t humans be born into indentured life and have to earn their freedom similarly?
It’s a good question. Say we can get past every form of discrimination based on appearance. Say we get to the point where the only thing that matters is our personalities, our characters, our minds. And say robots are, in this regard, indistinguishable from humans. Well, if robots can be “owned”, then why not humans too?
How do you distinguish robots from humans if MLK’s dream is made real?
Unfortunately, the result didn’t quite hit home for me. The feeling I got — that the characters weren’t as important as the world Newitz crafted — made everything feel a little too heavy-handed, a little too contrived. The world-building was fascinating; but quite frankly, I was much more interested in the characters and in how they interacted with that world.
Personally, I don’t like to be lectured at about… well, just about anything; I prefer a more subtle approach that lets the message sink in over time, even after I’ve finished the book. Your mileage may vary.
Still, the book is worth reading. Newitz gives us a new take on how current trends could end up creating quite a messy, messed up world — even worse than most people think — yet giving hope that people will just keep leaning towards the better thing and not the worse thing.
