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Summary: Friday
Review: I enjoyed this book, and I think you will too if you read it. It's about a genetically engineered courier who is called an artifical person. It raises questions in the reader's mind that are becoming increasingly important as scientists today are now unraveling the secrets of the human genome. Genetic engineering will lead to many ethical issues that as a society we will need to resolve. Ahead of its time, this book deals with how these issues affect one particular "person" named Friday.
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Summary: TGIF
Review: The single best audio version of Heinlein's FRIDAY is read by actress Samantha Eggar. This is far and away the best Heinlein book-on-tape as well! Don't waste your money with other readings--Samantha Eggar IS Friday!
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Summary: One of my all time favorite...
Review: Heinlein is great, although sometimes a little bit paternalistic vis-a-vis women... This book is about a very strong female character's desperate struggle to be accepted in a slightly decadent society. Dialogs are witty and smart, and the book is a great introduction to Heinlein's libertarian philosophy (which goes further than politics, to include family structures, sexuality, etc.)
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Summary: there should be 0 star
Review: This book is sick. No plot, lots of sex, some torture (fortunately missing breasts can be regrown) etc. Disgusting.
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Summary: A novel of intrigue filled with adventure
Review: A genetically engineered woman travels in the future world of Heinlein. A novel wrapped in future espionage and intrigue. I enjoyed Friday as a character, but felt that the story itself could have been more adventurous. You will find this novel to be quite enjoyable, and must for any Heinlein fan.
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Summary: Sophisticated, brilliant - and that's just the narrative
Review: Friday as a character is captivating, stamped with Heinlein's traditional humorous and realistic views. He also brings us into Friday's plight as she forces others to see her as a person, not an artificial one. While she remains loving - "the coldest circle of hell is reserved for those who abandon kittens" - her profession takes her into dangers which she handles with smooth precision. Pure Heinlein, purely fantastic. Love it.
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Summary: There's a little bit of Friday in all of us.
Review: At first glance, Friday is simple adventure novel, set in a future that is both terrifing and seductive.But like all of RAH's work, there is much more than is on the surface. Friday asks a lot of questions about humans, first and foremost among them being, "what makes us people?" By the time you put the book down, Ms. Friday knows the answer. Will be any closer to an answer than you picked upthe book, or will you have more questions? My money is on the latter.
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Summary: A fine, exciting read from an accomplished master
Review: FRIDAY does not compare with Robert A. Heinlein's acknowledged classic STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. In his best, most memorable works, Heinlein does not simply tell a story, he creates a world that is at once bizarre, and at the same time, frighteningly plausible. In STRANGER, he created, in the tale of Valentine Michael Smith, a world of free love and religious needs. In STARSHIP TROOPERS, an outwardly simple tale of war on other planets masked an insidious view of a completely war-oriented, republican world. Heinlein's gift, besides being a master story-teller, is to explain the machinations of these cultures in such a way that you find yourself completely empathizing with the politics of the world. Only later do you come to conclude that the world was not as appealling as it seemed. To put it another way, Heinlein is a master at propaganda. FRIDAY is not in the same league. It does create a world of the future that is odd yet easily believed to be possible, but it does not enrich this world with the same amount of care or detail as in his previous works. FRIDAY is a simple adventure tale, and a damn fine one at that. FRIDAY, the protagonist, is a genetically enhanced superbeing, working as a courier for a mysterious outfit. The story reveals her travels through a war-torn but upbeat world, her family life in an S-group (an interesting variation on out-moded Mormon beliefs), and her profound lust for life. There is some thought-provoking discussion as to her place in society (Is she human? Does she qualify as having a soul?), but the story does not dwell on this. Friday handles every situation as it arises, welcomes each new challenge with open arms, and the story moves so quickly, there is little time for any actual introspection. That is the one element that would have transformed FRIDAY from an entertaining read into a full-blown classic. If Heinlein had slowed the pace just a little, and let us dwell on some of the more alarming aspects of the society in which Friday survives, a truly astounding piece of science fiction would have resulted. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it. FRIDAY is an adventure, a slam-bang road trip that never fails to entertain. Take it on that basis, and FRIDAY qualifies as a story no science fiction fan should be without.
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Summary: Heinlein takes you for a very long ride
Review: I can't say I really hated this novel. It just didn't really seem to be going anywhere. The main character didn't really have a clearly defined objective, and the book just sort of meanders episodically, rotating supporting characters in and out throughout the novel like a revolving door. He does keep the action moving, though. The free-love world Heinlein seems to idealize is a given in his later novels, and so I wasn't as shocked by it as some of those who reviewed this book before me. There are a couple preconceptions one must be prepared for in the Heinlein universe: sex is fun and everybody likes to do it as much as they can; and nobody ever gets jealous or hurt by their lovers having sex with other people.
Even expecting that in a Heinlein novel, it was still a bit of a shock when the main character, the narrator, gets gang-raped within the first few chapters, but doesn't really seem to mind. Although the book isn't erotic in the least, Heinlein's casual acceptance that everybody is sleeping together can be unsettling to an unprepared reader.
Friday is a genetically engineered human (not a cyborg, as one of the above reviews states), although for some reason the society she exists in does not recognize genetically engineered humans as real people. To me, it was hard to swallow the idea that people would hold this prejudice, because there wasn't anything that was specificlly non-human about her. Since much of the things that happen to her depend on accepting this premise, the book was a little less enjoyable for this reason.
If you're looking for a book which doesn't offer any real deep thoughts, but just takes the reader on a winding path of near-constant action, then Friday fits that bill nicely. There is not much more to recommend it, though.
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Summary: she seems to come out of the page and shout "I am real"
Review: This SF novel has a special place for me. The first RAH story I read was a novelette entitled "Gulf", in which we first meet his concept of the super-human, and in which we first meet those from whom Friday was genetically constructed. In the present novel RAH takes the concept a stage further and creates a remarkable heroine, at the same time human and more than human. The novel has its fair share of human characters, many of who are rounded and credible in their humanity. Plenty of sex and violence too, but none the worse for that. Two further comments: the subject of this SF novel is nothing other than the nature of the human being itself ... and following recent developments in genetics (popularly reported in Time Magazine) it is more topical now than ever.
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