Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining and fast-paced, if not entirely deep book
Review: Friday is somewhat typical of post-Harsh Mistress Heinlein in that it is set in Heinlein's "free will and free love" future world, and it's characters reflect that. However, Friday is a bit different, as it is the only post-Time Enough For Love Heinlein novel (aside from JOB) that doesn't feature the same basic cast of characters. Instead we get one of Heinlein's most engaging characters ever here: Friday. Friday is another in the long line of Heinlein's first-person-narrarated heroes who are appealing and instantly likable. Heinlein excels at first-person narraration, and this book is no exception. This is a very fast-paced and entertaining book. However, the actual plot is very thin. It's more like a slide show of partially-related images. I would not call this one of his best books, because it doesn't have a major theme to it, but it still very fun to read, nonetheless. Thus, not a major Heinlein work, but one that fans will read and enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Friday only exists in RAH's fantasy
Review: she's smart, resourceful, good looking, ready for sex anytime, anywhere with anyone. I find the book utterly offensive. & the plot is going nowhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Not his best work...
Review: but a fun read. Heinlein seemed to keep getting hornier, the older he got, but doesn't let that get in the way of exploring themes that will soon be no longer fiction.How far out is human cloning? Some scientists are promising (threatening?) to have it accomplished within a year, others say we are still a decade away. That's only ten years and that seems soon. It will not be a very long leap to get from cloning to designing Artificial Persons (AP's, apes). What will be their legal status? Their social standing? How will we be able to tell natural people from AP's? With Friday, we get to explore this.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for fans of Heinlein.
Review: At first, this book is a bit confusing, but once the reader gets into it, it's a definite page-turner. I read it in one afternoon and loved every minute of it. The ending is a little sappy, but all in all, a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise wasted
Review: I've read every book Heinlein ever wrote. After the middle sixties, I started asking myself why. In spite of his undoubted storytelling ability, his ideology began to take center stage. Friday is a genentically enhanced female (watch Dark Angel to see it done better) who resembles nothing more than a lost pup looking for a pat instead of a kick. She gets kicked more often than not. Heinlein's narrative skills are as good as ever, but the book seems to have no point other than to preach sex, sex, SEX! For really good SF, read the earlier, "juvenile" Heinlein, who was not juvenile at all.
Rating:
Summary: Protocyberpunk Gem
Review: A few decades into the next century, the world's superpowers, including the United States, will have balkanized into a number of smaller states, and the real world powers-multinational corporations--will have territory no broader than the lots their headquarters occupy. At least on paper, for their boardroom squabbles take on mammoth proportions--chess matches with the globe as the board. One contender loses a pawn and Acapulco vanishes in a nuclear fireball. Amid this capitalist/nationalist brawl, a few intelligence agencies sell their services to the highest bidder, and in order to act effectively, these agencies need strong, swift, intelligent operatives. Enter Friday, a genetically engineered woman who can outfight, outrun and outwit any normal human. She works as a courier for one of the mercenary agencies, and we follow her exploits as she dispatches her assignments. But all is not well with this superwoman, for she has been conditioned from earliest childhood to think of herself as an "Artificial Person," which is nothing more than her brave new world's designation for "slave." Worse, every time Friday feels as though she has attained a measure of love and belonging (which she never got in the corporate lab that raised her), something happens to upend her world. Follow along on her quest for love--and watch out for assassins. Heinlein penned this proto-cyberpunk novel in 1982, a few years before Gibson fired what is arguably the first shot in the cyberpunk revolution: Neuromancer. (One wonders how much Neuromancer's megalopolis "The Sprawl" owes to Friday's vivid and chilling backdrop.) And we find in Friday what is a normal feat for him but amazing for most any other septuagenarian novelist: Heinlein clearly and seemingly accurately extrapolates trends which still unfurl around us today. For example, he predicts an internet complete with multimedia and search engines long before it existed, and describes a leviathan called Shipstone, Inc., an indispensable and manipulative megacorporation highly suggestive of the Microsoft of today. He speaks of a world tendency for large states to splinter into many smaller ones a full decade before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And Heinlein also riffs on the darker undercurrents threatening mankind, among them organized crime, pestilence and famine, and various forms of know-nothingism--including religious terrorism. Friday is loosely tied to the novelette "Gulf," which appeared in Assignment in Eternity; the two works share a character, "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, and the motif of a secret society of supermen. There are enough big ideas and rousing action in Friday to satisfy any reader. ~~Beth Ager & Carlos Angelo
Rating:
Summary: There's a story in there somewhere...
Review: This story covers the memoirs of a genetically enhanced woman - Friday. Apparently just about everything about her is enhanced: Reflexes, Strength, Looks and Libido. The universe in which this story takes place seems to be populated entirely by heterosexual men and bisexual women. At times I really felt that the sex was detracting from body the story. Even after reading the book cover-to-cover it was a little difficult deciphering exactly what the book was about. This was probably Heinlein's intent: make the reader have to think about what the story was. To me it was about the protagonist searching for some place to belong. In a world filled with people who treated her as an unwelcome artificial person, Friday was searching for some place to call "home", and some people to call "family". I did not dislike this book, but I just couldn't connect to the character. She gave up the opportunity to settle down to work, and gave up the opportunity to work to settle down too many times, and there was just no method for this I could follow. Additionally many loose ends are left poorly resolved.
Rating:
Summary: I'm the 43rd Reviewer for this book. What does that tell U?
Review: Another of Heinein's best works. His philosophy of life is like New Hampshire's slogan--live free or die. Freedom, love, happiness. Friday is an enhanced person. Not quite human, or rather more than human. She works as a courier and love and adventure falls into her lap. An engaging story. Buy the hard cover, because you will want to re-read in many times. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent story.
Review: I'm not a big fan of Heinlein; nonetheless, this is one of my favorites. The characters live, the plot is plausible given the world they are placed in, and the world is not implausible given a beginning in the present and certain assumptions, none of which stretch credulity overfar. A must for any Heinlein fan, but more than that, I'd recommend this book for any reader of science fiction who isn't all that fond of Heinlein, but who is willing to give him one more try.
Rating:
Summary: What is it to be human?
Review: Rife with both the brilliancies and shortcomings for which Heinlein is so well known, Friday is, at its core, an exemplary book about a person's life - at times ordinary, at times extraordinary - who is exposed to prejudice and racism, and must answer for herself what it means to be human. Those who marveled at the philosophy of the movie (not the book) "Blade Runner," will appreciate this "other side of the coin."
|
