Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Introduction

Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers he was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Heinlein was a notable writer of science-fiction short stories, and he was one of a group of writers who were groomed in their writing by John W. Campbell, Jr. the editor of Astounding magazine—notwithstanding that Heinlein himself had denied Campbell having influenced his writing in any great degree (Franklin p.25-30).

Book Overview

Friday is a 1982 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is the story of a female "artificial person", the titular character, genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better than normal humans. Artificial humans are widely resented, and much of the story deals with Friday's struggle both against prejudice and to conceal her enhanced attributes from other humans. The story is set in a balkanized world in which the nations of North American have been split up into a number of smaller nations.

Analysis Friday is a secret courier. She is employed by a man known to her only as 'Boss'. Operating from and over a near-future Earth, in which North America has become Balkanized into dozens of independent states, where culture has become bizarrely vulgarized and chaos is the happy norm, she finds herself on shuttlecock assignment at Boss' seemingly whimsical behest. From New Zealand to Canada, from one to another of the new states of America's disunion, she keeps her balance nimbly with quick, expeditious solutions to one calamity and scrape after another.

A few decades into the next century, the world's superpowers, including the United States, will have balkanized into a number of smaller states, and the real world powers-multinational corporations will have territory no broader than the lots their headquarters occupy. At least on paper, for their boardroom squabbles take on mammoth proportions chess matches with the globe as the board. One contender loses a pawn and Acapulco vanishes in a nuclear fireball. Amid this capitalist/nationalist brawl, a few intelligence agencies sell their services to the highest bidder, and in order to act effectively, these agencies need strong, swift, intelligent operatives(Heinlein pp.12-15).

Enter Friday, a genetically engineered woman who can outfight, outrun and outwit any normal human. She works as a courier for one of the mercenary agencies, and we follow her exploits as she dispatches her assignments. But all is not well with this superwoman, for she has ...