Service Model

The world will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. Similarly, it won’t be the robots that uprise and destroy humans, but our own incompetence when it comes to programming. Build and programme things correctly and everything should be fine, but this is modern life and doing things correctly seems to be out of fashion. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new novel, Service Model is a novel about an out of work robot who just wants a job, but in a world where nothing works, there is nowhere to go. 

For years Charles has looked after his master on a vast estate. The routine includes setting up the Master’s travelling clothes for a trip that they will not take, enquire about a Mistress that does not exist. Charles is a slave to his routine, no matter how wrong that routine is, but when one day the Master’s throat is slit, it appears that Charles is a murderer, and he has no idea why. The newly christened Uncharles sets out on a quest across a broken world to find the answer and meets more bureaucracy than at your average airport passport control. 

If you think too much about the future, it can be depressing so you may as well smile through the pain. Service is a dystopian novel, but one told through dark humour. The tale is told from the perspective of Charles/Uncharles, a slave to logic. This leads to a lot of the humour, but also gives a glimpse into why the world collapsed. If the household that Charles runs works, but is full of inefficiencies and oddities, what happened to the rest of the world? 

This is what we find out in the book as it turns into a road novel. Uncharles meets a companion in The Wonk, a robot with extremely broken programming. Together they set out to try and find out what happened to the humans and get Uncharles a new valet role. The book becomes a series of vignettes as Uncharles discovers a new location, only to move on. These include a historic reenactment of human 20th century life, an eternal war between robots and a Library that has an odd way of archiving material. 

Most of the misery in the book makes sense from a logical point of view, the robots are just doing what they are programmed to think is right. 20th century life for humans was a miserable slog of work, commute, work again. Robots recreate this perfectly; after all, when humans had the chance to work from home, they were forced by their ‘superiors’ to move back to the office. This wry sense of satire is seen throughout the book. You can read Uncharles’ adventures as just an amusing book, but there are deeper levels that speak on modern society and its idiocrasies. Think George Orwell, mixed with Pratchett and Gilliam. 

Uncharles goes on an internal journey at the same time as they push against the programming that makes them. Why did they kill their Master, was there a moment of self? Being told a story in a logical manner in a robot’s tone means the book takes some getting used to in terms of rhythm, but logic is key to the humour. The book is a funny and different feeling novel from an author who appears to be able to write wonderfully in a variety of genre styles.