Friday (Unabridged)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent story told with typical Heinlein flair.
Review: A must for anyone who appreciates Heinlein's off-beat humour. Friday is a strong, intelligent, highly skilled professional, a testament to the skill of the genetic engineers who "created" her. But she's also a lonely woman with a desperate need for acceptance - which she seldom finds among "real" humans. Her search for a place where she belongs and her battles against the prejudice of others are inspiring. A fast moving action-adventure with a sting in the tail. This book offers a scathing commentary on prejudice and glimpse of a future that may not be as far away as it seems.

Rating:
Summary: Go get it! Read it! Friday is the precursor of Aeon Flux!
Review: I get *really* sick of women who say, "Gee, science fiction doesn't have enough strong women!" and when a book like Friday comes along, with a strong, strutting, active woman in it, they all retire to their Sunday punch and chew on Heinlein for "skewed sexuality." Friday is in the grand tradition of powerful female fictional characters dating from (at least) the middle ages--Nicolette, who defends a french city from the Saracens; Spenser's Britomart, the female knight; Howard's Red Sonja. Et cetera. Heinlein says more about human prejudice and incapability to see beyond social codes in this novel than he had since writing _Stranger in a Strange Land_

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Summary: "Friday" foretells the future of the Internet and Cloning
Review: If any book can be said to be tracking steadfastly towards an accurate prediction of the future, it is Heinlein's "Friday." Written over nine years ago, it addresses the issues presented by the Internet, cloning, international companies, and may yet fortell other events in the future. It is an interesting and rewarding read, even for those who would not normally touch Science Fiction. Adventure, edge of your chair suspense, a heroine who is a role model for women and someone everyman will love, it's got it all. Put it in your basket and read it more than once. Then pass it to a friend

Rating:
Summary: Great book (a little sexist maybe, but I forgive him)
Review: This book is an excellent example of Heinlein's combination of rip-roaring science fiction and social commentary. Despite his objectification of women, this is a book you can really sink your teeth into.

Rating:
Summary: Capable women coping w/a difficult world ****
Review: As a friend, aunt to my daughter, or fellow rigger in any theater or concert hall or arena , Friday is an exemplary woman. Not only does she have augmented phyisical resources, but also well rounded emotional & smarts as well. Brittney can go fishing w/Friday anytime. love dad.

Rating:
Summary: Heinlein's best work troubles the soul as only great SF can.
Review: Disguised as a fast-paced adventure tale, "Friday" considers what it means to be human -- intellectually, physically, socially, & sexually -- in a morally bankrupt society. Bringing together the most thought-provoking themes that RAH explored throughout his distinguished career, "Friday" removes the limits on human potential ... but finds frailty still. The protagonist, Friday, drives the action through the first-person view of the only convincing female character that Heinlein has put on paper. The disturbing future in which Heinlein places her is all too plausible. Heinlein's technological forecasts have always been prescient, but the sociology in most of his classics has not aged well. "Friday" is the exception that you'll see emerging in your 21st-century online news.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent starter for the new Heinlein reader.
Review: One of the difficulties in reading Heinleins works is managing the cross-references to other Heinlein books. But "Friday" is a great standalone book. A top-notch adventure story with special emphasis on charater relationships (the Heinlein specialty). Don't plan on sleeping much until you have this one finished--it's difficult to stop turning the pages.

Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: I remember telling my grandfather that I was reading this book and seeing him flinch. "Heinlein's a good writer, but he's written some bombs and unfortunately you picked up one of his worst." This book was a chore to get through. Heinlein can't write women - even if they're artificial. The treatment of the rape is insulting. Not only does she feel totally fine about it (even marrying one of her rapists later) but then she cries when she gets lost in the woods or when she BURNED POTATOES. At that point I threw the novel around the room a few times and swore not to read anymore, but it was about 200 pages in, so...

Some might say that her reaction is fine because she's written by a man (which is absolutely ridiculous, plenty of men can write women - at least better portaits than this) or not a real human. But then why does the book INSIST INSIST INSIST that she's just like everyone else. Then why doesn't she ACT like it?

Some have argued that this is an adventure book but all of her doings profoundly bored me. There were some nice speeches on racism, but a lot of people have done it a lot better. Also, the supposedly most "influential" part of this book - the idea of America split into Balkanized states - was barely covered. After reading it I couldn't even tell how the different parts of America were so different. (Although the California section was somewhat amusing). I will say that the amount of sex in this book is greatly exaggerated. There really is very little.

I haven't read anything else of Heinlein. I'm open to the fact that he may be a good writer, but this book ranks as one of the worst things I've ever read. Annoying main character, boring adventures, and a world only half-focused. Thumbs way down.

Rating:
Summary: One of my Favorites
Review: heinlein does an excellent job of portraying the mixed up emotions of a cyborg trying to relate to everything in the human world. Friday shows confusion over several situations, and while the book drags on the edge of an adventure novel, it really seems to be about the confusion that a non-human entity has in relating to the human relationships all around her sphere of emotional influence. Given that the relationships she once thought "safe" have become something profoundly different, RAH does a great job of portraying her confusion over what has happened - along with the other feelings of grief, anger, and finally, comprehension. A good storyline, coupled with an excellent undercurrent regarding the difficulties in dealing with ever-changing relationships in an entity that is never truly changing --- or is she?? :)


Rating:
Summary: Some of you don't get it
Review: This late-period Heinlein novel is at least better than the one it followed (_The Number of the Beast_). Most of it is fun to reread.

The protagonist here is an Artificial Person (AP) named Friday Jones, who works as a courier for the organization headed up by Hartley 'Kettle Belly' Baldwin (last seen in the 1949 short stort 'Gulf'). Friday's very cool all around but she has a little self-esteem problem owing to the fact that much of the world thinks APs aren't genuinely human.

Well, of _course_ they are; they're genetically engineered to be able to outperform us ordinary mortals in strength, speed, and intelligence, but they're human (genetically and otherwise) all the same. (So you should ignore reviewers' comments describing Friday as a 'cyborg'. She's no such thing.) And that's really the heart of this novel -- Friday's long and sometimes excruciating journey to _belonging_. (In this respect, the novel very nicely _undoes_ all of the Uebermensch crap Heinlein wrote in the 1940s.)

That's the heart, but the novel has a couple of spots on its soul. As other readers have noted, Friday's response to her rape (and her rapist) is more than a little jarring, and I don't think it's possible to explain it away as a result of her upbringing and genetic enhancements. And I could have lived without the several pages of astrogation and starcharts (although I do enjoy Heinlein's little doodle of a centaur).

The sequence of events starts off well enough, but it sort of rambles and meanders. Oh, well; most of it is interesting, anyway, although the secret-agent intrigue peters out partway through. And there are memorable characters -- nothing quite at the level of the Long family, mind you, but still some pretty interesting people.

Plus there's some extremely cool stuff in the background. Heinlein the prognosticator scores especially well here, creating a fictional analogue of the Internet (in 1982) and setting his tale against a backdrop of corporate infighting and political Balkanization that is almost never, but should be, credited in histories of cyberpunk.

I like it -- at least well enough to reread it fairly often. I wouldn't recommend starting with it if you're new to Heinlein, though.