Sweet Chariot Book

Two months before the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner was released, Robert A. Heinlein first published Friday.

Blade Runner was the film adaption of Philip K. Dicks' 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but Heinlein may also have been influenced by PKD, in that Friday concerns the creation of "enhanced" humans.

Both works also feature and highlight a strong female lead character. Friday for Heinlein and Priss in Blade Runner have created in speculative fiction an archetypal female: inhumanly strong, sexually active and dancing to the beat of a different drummer. This archetype may be seen in other later works like Neuromancer and Snow Crash.

Heinlein readers will not be shocked to read page after page of sexual discussions, sex talk and long dissertations of sexual freedoms. What was edgy and fresh in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land in the 60s had become less so by the early 80s. This was still better than the studied creepiness Heinlein had devolved to in other of his later works.

Like many of his works, this is also a vehicle whereby RAH can explore and comment upon many of his ubiquitous themes like family structures, government (particularly a libertarian aversion) and social mores. This is also like Snow Crash in that Heinlein has described a balkanized, anarcho-capitalistic world order. Fans will also be glad to see much mention of Heinlein's Past History universe and in style and pace this is also reminiscent of his work The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

Fast moving and fun, Friday is a shining light in his later canon.

*** 2021 reread -

Of course with most of Heinlein's later works, from 1970 on, we are reminded that the old gentleman still liked the ladies.

First published in 1982, when our hero was a spry and virile man of 75, Friday reveals Heinlein to be the senior statesman of SF writers keeping his finger on the pulse of what's going on.

BTW - Pfizer first discovered Viagra in 1989, a year after the grandmaster's death. Too bad because if he had been able to take the little blue pill, Heinlein might be alive today at 113, still randy as an old goat.

Heinlein had the sign of the times as in the early 80s we see many seemingly unrelated art expressions describing a mildly dystopian, anarcho-capitalistic society where social mores and cultural differences have been blurred and merged. Bladerunner, Neuromancer are two but I can also think of Rush's 1982 album Signals and Howard Chaykin's 1983 comic American Flagg!. RAH joins these other expressions while revealing much of the same kind of vision with Friday.

This time around I also noted the exploration of Friday as a meta-human, as an enhanced life form, not necessarily artificial, and the prejudice she experiences and also loneliness trying to fit in.

I had also forgotten how violent this book was and even though it is somewhat softened by Heinlein's homely comic delivery, it may not be suitable for many readers.