Recently, someone took out a shady credit card in my name, so I googled the bank and tracked down a customer service number in all the online reviews of what a predatory credit card this is, and I tried to report the fraud. The AI operator asks for an account number, twice, before telling you that it’s ok that you forgot, and then asking for the phone number, twice, and it can’t be turned from this path no matter what you say or type. Since I didn’t open the account, I didn’t have any of this information, so eventually I was routed to reset my password. For the account I don’t have. Twice. Eventually, I got through to a human customer service operator, who asked how I even knew about the card if, as I claimed, I hadn’t opened it myself, and then let me know that filing a false fraud report was wasting the company’s time.
That is the overall vibe of Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Every bot doing their limited job, with zero thoughts and accomplishing nothing.
Christian P. Haines at Ancillary Review of Books describes the opening inciting incident like this: “Charles, a valet robot, murders his master, giving him the closest shave imaginable: a razor blade right through the throat. At first, he doesn’t realize what he’s done, only that something is off. Charles eventually becomes aware of his mistake, but the action doesn’t compute.” It’s a perfect summary of the murder, which turns out to be quite secondary to that overall vibe. That feeling that something is off, in a way that Charles cannot quite understand, powers the whole book.
Since Charles the butler bot is guilty of murder, he takes on a new identity as Uncharles, and goes looking for a new job. This new identity isn’t a sneaky ruse or a heroic crisis of identity, since a robot’s incapable of either, it mostly comes come the confusing incompetence of failing systems and a skeleton crew of limited-ability robots.
This comes early in the story, but this was the twist of the book for me — we swing from a tech-enabled, luxurious future, with valet robots and smarthomes doing all the grunt work for humans, to a world where there’s not quite enough staff or supplies or repairs. I was reminded of Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains, a short story about a smart home doing its daily tasks long after humans are gone and there’s no one to wake up and no one to clean up after. I was also reminded of my own life in weird pandemic days, with random gaps on the grocery shelves because the invisible systems weren’t there anymore.
It’s mostly a dark hero’s journey from here, as Uncharles goes looking for a job that will give him purpose. He wanders around (although he believes he is efficiently performing tasks) seeing the work that mindless automation has made.
I liked the idea of the secondary character, the Wonk, at first, because Charles’ view raises an interesting point, seeing what the readers know is a human as an unfortunately malfunctioning robot. But this began to wear out, even as I liked the robot-human buddy comedy aspect. I’m in general not a fan of characters who ask the protagonist if he’s gotten the point yet. I don’t enjoy the scenes when Poirot asks poor Hastings if he’s worked out who the murderer is yet, and this had the same feeling. Haines, at Ancillary Review of Books, also notes “there’s the slapstick antics of the Wonk, zipping in and out of the narrative like a gnat, needling Uncharles, our reluctant protagonist, to consider the meaning of his existence” and that’s my feeling too.
Uncharles’ travels take him to a sort of historical reenactment, set up to imitate a very familiar system. Tzer Island Book Blog notes that many of the remaining humans “make a long circular commute to engage in meaningless make-work at workplaces next to their residences. Robots were supposed to make manual labor unnecessary, but how can humans be valued in the eyes of others if they don’t work?” Uncharles sees these humans slogging through a crowded, miserable commute to and from a pointless job. It’s a bit on the nose for our time of return-to-work orders, but I enjoy when a character in futuristic scifi or specfic references the ancient customs, and means our time period.
Later, in a completely unconnected scene, Uncharles sees a terribly uncomfortable chair, and he’s told “Exhibit A is a product of a decision that the good, hardworking people of the world should not see the indigent and the transient sleeping on their benches, in their rail stations, in their public spaces. Hence the benches were replaced by something that nobody, wanted or unwanted, could comfortably use, to ensure that those few who might have used them improperly could not.” If you’ve ever been stuck waiting for a train, you’ve probably encountered that kind of hostile architecture. Or maybe there were enough people crowded in, waiting for a delayed train, that you just wished you could be one of the ones balancing on an uncomfortable half-seat. There are several moments of Uncharles encountering familiar parts of our world, and most of them are funny, clever, and resonating.
There are less successful sections. I found the robot military section very heavy handed, probably because it’s hard to say anything new about a future military that no longer has an objective besides endless war. There are a couple Doctor Who or Star Trek: The New Generation episodes about a military that no longer remembers what the war is about, and I think I’d prefer those. The military that no longer has a goal is an interesting idea, and that’s why it’s in so many scifi stories, but it’s been done plenty of times.
As other readers have noticed, there’s a drag in the second half of the novel. I also found the robots-in-Oz and the man behind the curtain a bit weird, but by that point, I was invested in Uncharles and his outcome, so I kept reading.
Overall, I thought Service Model was both a zany adventure read and thought-provoking lit, even with the slower sections and occasional heavy-handed moments.
Haines, Christian P. “An Error in the Way That Everything Works: Review of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model.” Ancillary Review of Books, 9 July 2024, ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2024/07/10/an-error-in-the-way-that-everything-works-review-of-adrian-tchaikovskys-service-model/.
Book Blog – Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tzer Island, 7 June 2024, www.tzerisland.com/bookblog/2024/6/7/service-model-by-adrian-tchaikovsky.html.
One of my students last semester wrote about how much he loves playing Cyberpunk 2077, which reminded me how much I used to enjoy tabletop Cyberpunk, and as soon as the semester finished, I got it.
I have to warn you that James Goodhand’s new novel 
What if someday I made a cool indie game, that would be amazing! What if then I finished it and released it, and then I had a game out in the world? What if I did it again and I had multiple games finished and for sale? What if I somehow had a big enough place to store and organize the stock of all my games? What if I had enough local shows to need banners and tablecloths and business cards? And what if I had enough mail orders to need packing and mailing supplies? And what if I got enough sales on Amazon to need special Bezos barcode stickers?