I am always a little unsure how to describe something like Service Model, as it is a book that lives more as a humorous opinion piece than a traditional story. The absurdism and commentary in Service Model add up to a fascinating 4th wall break that intentionally does away with the usual narrative barrier between reader and author. Service Model feels like Adrian Tchaikovsky climbed into bed with me during my nightly reading, and turned to me and said “Hey, robots are so cool. AI is changing everything! But also, have you ever considered how terrible the rich are or how many issues still plague America?”
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model is a philosophy paper mashed with a social commentary, but written as a riff on classical authors. Chapters are labeled with fun bot names like K4FK-R (Kafka), 4W-L (Orwell), and D4NT-A (Dante) and dive into several of their philosophical stances through the lens of a robot slowly gaining sentience. Our protagonist is a robot valet UnCharles who inexplicably murders his owner and goes on an odyssey through a dystopian wasteland of societal collapse while existing in a Schrodinger’s box of self-awareness. Uncharles keeps trying to overturn rocks looking for a new master to valet, and instead keeps finding logical end steps of the worst of our societies for the viewer to gaze at. It is both fun and deeply depressing at the same time, the best kind of duality.
Tchaikovsky engages in a lot of pointed social commentary through the use of dry humor on subjects like the meaning of free will, justice, and the purpose of life. The book is a masterpiece on slow burn and showing instead of telling. Uncharles is delightful and his robotic objectives and humble design result in an inhuman protagonist that seems to represent the best humanity has to offer: serving others and bringing help and kindness. The juxtaposition of Uncharles’ earnestly naive outlook and the bleak reality of the setting produces a comedic effect that feels like a modern parable.
What is really nice about the story is that it seems to avoid the pitfalls that some of the other books in the space fall into. The back of Service Model says it is a mashup of Redshirts and Murderbot, which feels incredibly misleading. I thought Redshirts commentary was about as subtle and convincing as throwing a brick through a window and Tchaikovsky is much better at talking you around to nice little gems of observations and morals. Meanwhile, the only real comparison I would make between Service Model and Murderbot is that they have AI/robot protagonists. Also, Tchaikovsky is very much built differently than other authors, and if you know what I mean by this then you know to expect all the little delightful Tchaikovsky-isms that are very much present in this book.
I do feel like I have one principal complaint about Service Model. Given Adrian Tchaikovsky’s absolutely unbelievable track record with powerful novellas, there is absolutely no reason this book needed to be 400 pages when I would put money on AT being able to deliver the exact same story in less than 200. The novel feels somewhat strangely padded given Tchaikovsky’s other bodies of work, but I also recognize that this is a very different narrative structure for him as an author so maybe he felt like he needed the wiggle room to play with some new ideas. The result is still phenomenal, just a little slower than it needed to be.
Service Model is a very contextually powerful book. It feels unbelievably poignant to our current reality and it offers a lot of great observations about our current world and even offers some hot takes and directional suggestions. At the same time, the strong relationship with current context means that Service Model will likely age rapidly as most of these books do–so you should read it soon. Don’t just toss it on your to-do list as it is definitely worth your time and you will want to read it during our current historic times.
Rating: Service Model – 8.5/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
I finished listening to the audio edition last night. I loved every second. Tchaikovsky doesn’t get enough public acclaim, imo.