Service Model

Charles, a robot valet, unexpectedly murders his employer. He then sets out on a journey to Diagnostics to find out why he did it, and starts a heroes journey of sorts. Through seven episodes, mostly accompanied by the Wonk, who he meets at Diagnostics, he journeys through a societal landscape where humans are mostly dead or scrabbling to survive.

So what happened? The Wonk wants it to be that robots have obtained self-awareness. Charles just wants to be a valet for a human, but is complex enough to act unhappily at some of his opportunities. Even though he claims to be incapable of unhappiness.

I found myself really liking Charles, but that may be my internal tendency toward the satisfaction of ticking off tasks on a task list, which is what a lot of Charles' internal monologue is about. The overall story is good, but it is overly long (7 episodes in Charles' quest) and I just wanted to get on with it in a few places.

Insightful - but maybe a smidge less insightful than it seems to think of itself. I enjoyed this read; each moment of Uncharles's journey is clearly supposed to shine a light on a specific part of human society in a way that felt a little too blatant to me. But the conclusion was incredibly satisfying and brought the whole thing together well. I highly recommend this book!

The somewhat satirical tale of Uncharles, a robot programmed as valet traveling across a collapsing, nearly post-human society, after the death of its master.

Very reminiscent of a lot of 50s and early 60s sci-fi, in that it uses bits of the apocalypse setting to satirize modern scoeity. It's pleasant, but somewhat unchallenging. Good as a lighter read.

Reminiscent of Monk and Robot though broader and darker, we're along for a calm inquisitive road novel with an earnest robot butler some moment after the world as they and we know it ended. Satirically enjoys itself in upending formulaic scenes and takes us to some imaginative places, surprisingly light fun.

This book reads to me as satirical Gulliver's Travels style book with a task-following robotic protagonist, but leaning more towards social commentary than political. However, I have such mixed feelings about it. Even if I agree with the book's messages about wealth disparity, meaningless jobs, and how systems need kindness, the length of the book overstays its welcome and the didactic ending feels heavy handed.

Some of its travel destinations felt repetitive by the end, and in my opinion a number could have been edited out without the book losing much at all. (If I were to make these edits, I personally would have trimmed out Decommissioning, the Library, Ubot; oh, and also, some of God's employment opportunities, as I feel like the Jul@#!% scene covers that just as effectively.)

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 him to be examined. Now things take a turn for the unexpected when he meets up with an unusual 'robot' known as the Wonk, who adds unexpected tasks and trigger a re-interpretation of tasks in Uncharles' (formerly Charles) decision-making process.

The Wonk is attempting to find out what happened to the world. And together, they will make a journey through a wasteland landscape to find answers: first in an underground farm that is trying to recreate the mindless workplace of the past, then in a Library Archive that doesn't really archive, and so on. As the journey progresses, Uncharles begins to see loopholes and new ways to reinterpret his instructions, all the while trying to figure out his place in the now desolate world, which no longer needs his skills as a valet.

Their journey would end when they end up in the only place left with authority. But the answers they get there would not be the ones they expect, and the only way to survive is to challenge authority and come up with their own way to remake the world.

The story is full of social commentary about how we live and how robots are treated, if we had intelligent but not sentient robots. The question of robot sentience is asked many times in the story, but the answer may depend on how you interpret the ending of the story.

I was entertained throughout. Charles is ... delightful seems the wrong word, but I can't think of the right one. The humour was understated, which I appreciate, and as an entry to the author I am very pleased to have been able to buy the book and support him.