Γνῶθι σεαυτόματον, or rather, don’t – Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
May. 16th, 2025 06:12 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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What is the appeal of a character who does not know themself? There’s clearly something in it, in seeing emotions in someone resolutely determined they don’t have them – it’s a character arc I’ve seen plenty of in a variety of media – but I just find it frustrating. The process of reading Service Model, the Hugo and Clarke award nominated novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky, was thus one of endurance rather than enjoyment. The protagonist – who goes by various names throughout the story, one of which is Uncharles – is a robot encountering some unexpected scenarios. Throughout the course of these, he frequently finds himself accused of emotions, or pondering which ones he might (hypothetically) have were he a character who experiences emotions, and of course, the funny bit here is that we can all observe him definitely experiencing those emotions that he’s desperately claiming he doesn’t have. Ha. Ha.
Uncharles makes his way through a world steadily revealed to be more and more broken, trying to find himself new employment after unfortunate circumstances leave him out of his current role as a valet in a fancy manor house. Along the way, he meets The Wonk, who proceeds to antagonise him into perpetrating both further journey and plot, and Uncharles is forced to face up to decisions that touch on both ethical problems and his own place in society. The relationship between the two characters, as well as between Uncharles and his task list and response to stimuli, and to the experiences he goes through as part of the story, focus on themes of self-determination and personhood, as well as the failure states of a society drawing heavily on automation. What could be the modern problem here being reflected, I wonder, hmmmmm? Well, I jest, it’s not just a book about AI – there’s a lot in the story, especially in the latter third, about societal priorities and justice, and what it means to adhere to rules in the absence of care, and meaningless bureaucracy (the last of which is the lubrication that helps facilitate the shift from the earlier, more comedic part of the story into this more seriously focused ending).
I say “more comedic”, but there are two main problems I experienced with this book, and the first is that I simply did not find it funny. I could observe that comedy was, theoretically, being perpetrated. I could see that situations were set up with contrasts or information provided to the audience but not internalised by Uncharles or a variety of other setups that clearly had the outward appearance of “joke”. But they did nothing for me whatsoever. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly why, though several things did start to stand out as I went along, one of which being that it felt like all the funnies were part of one, broader funny, which comes back to that point about Uncharles’ self-knowledge, and his awareness of the world. The wider joke of which most of the others (outside very small asides) form constituent parts of is effectively that Uncharles is in some way blinkered about the world and himself. As with all humour, it makes no sense when I type it out like this, so you’ll have to trust me. That single megajoke persisted. Oh boy it persisted. I remember saying to someone at around the 50% mark that I would dearly love for the book to get a second joke, because I was entirely done with this one, which I suspect would have been true even if that joke had landed for me at the start. If anything, it made it worse when about 65% through the story draws attention back to the joke by reiterating it in another context. The way the whole thing is played with is clearly deliberately leaning in for effect, but the effect on me is “grumpiness”.
This is a massive shame, because I’ve generally liked Tchaikovsky’s other work, and do find him funny in sentence-level aside situations in his more serious offerings. Every time I try to think about my opinions on this book, I find myself with sentences like that, determined to prove I do have a sense of humour, I promise, I’m not just an emotionless block, in a way I feel much less compelled to do with other responses I do (or do not) have to stories. Funny (ha) how it goes like that. The paranoia that I’m the problem, rather than the text. But to ignore that paranoia for a moment, I do think it’s a text problem, instead of/as well as a me one. I think reliance on a single megajoke is a weakness, as it requires the audience to keep finding the same thing funny, if they found it funny the first time (of which there is little guarantee). And even for the initial hit of it, I do just think it’s a weak joke. It’s being propped up by a bunch of absurdity, of robots continuing to do tasks in contexts where the task is no longer relevant or even sometimes possible, of futile repetitions, which hide a little of how small it is, but not entirely, and not for as long as it keeps on going.
But humour is subjective and hard to pin down, so I’m going to leave that one there and move onto my second problem: that, when there is a serious message coming up (which is true throughout but much more prominent in the last third or so), I did not find that message particularly worth the time being spent on it. I agree with it, I suppose, in general terms. But it was quite trite, quite baby’s-first-parable-about-capitalism, and I’m used to more sophisticated concepts and interrelated ideas, especially from Tchaikovsky.
And I can see why this one leans simpler. The seriousness is taking a secondary role to the more prominent comedy, so maybe there isn’t space to develop something big and deep that then might take the reins and distract from the funnies. If you start wanting to use the world to make a serious point, the world needs more elaboration. So to foreground the humour, that work gets reduced to make space. But that means that the climactic ethical conclusion feels a little unearned when we get there, a little shallow.
I’ve talked before about how I suspect reading something purely for an award probably makes me judge it more harshly. Maybe in another world, I might have given this one an extra star outside of that context. But I suspect, more truthfully, in that world I wouldn’t have picked it up, and if I did, I wouldn’t have finished it because I’d have recognised quickly that not finding it funny was going to significantly impact the reading experience. But I did read it, and I did feel how I felt about it. You can only read the book you have in your hands at the moment you encounter it; getting caught up in what-if justifications isn’t actually going to help because I cannot construct that hypothetical me with any accuracy. There’s always some context that affects my reading1. I’m a person. I’m made of context. This is just the one I have at the moment.
And in that context, I spent a book alongside a character failing to recognise his own experiences, that are being presented whalingly obviously to the reader. It stretched out, filling nearly the whole novel, alongside subsidiary examples of failing to spot things. Just as a mismanaged murder mystery where I work out the killer too early drives me up the wall, the information management here, this knowledge sitting with me unacknowledged by the story, frustrated me immensely. It won’t be everyone’s experience – clearly, because this has been double award nominated – but it is mine.
And this double award nomination may change the context of my reading… but I would argue it also should change the context. I’m not just assessing it as a book standing alone anymore. I am asking “will I vote for this in the Hugos?”, and where it ranks amongst its fellows. I have a pressing reason to look at it more closely, because its status as award nominee requires action and thought. And in that context… I find it severely wanting. The question “why did this make the shortlist?” can be asked in a varying spectrum of good faith, and here, I’m asking it with the implied “because I don’t understand and don’t personally believe it merits it”. I would genuinely like to know, but I have my own opinion on the matter. I looked up a bunch of positive reviews when I finished it to try to understand. But they didn’t give me any new insight. It simply comes down to a difference of sense of humour and preferences about depth of ideas exploration, and a preference for stories that don’t feel like they’re trying to be cute about something. All things I know about myself, but was unable to act upon because of the context in which I found myself reading the story.
So I suppose, however much I took heed of γνῶθι σεαυτόν, I have failed to act on it. Is it better? I mean, I got a review out of it, I suppose. Whether that was enough might be a question for the reader.
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And so, Hugo rankings. The current standings run thus:
- The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley – previously covered here, and the only one of my nominees to make the final ballot.
- The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett – previously covered here.
- A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher – previously covered here.
- Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
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*I spent way too much mental effort – even enlisting help – on the stupid pun title and so if you come in and tell me a) the accent is in the wrong place or b) the o should be long because there should be o-o contraction (which thus means a) as well), well… good. I’m glad. In this fallen world, it would be nice to hold on to some truth, some rightness.
- And of course, it’s always the negative context that must be accounted for, but the times when a book got an extra star because I really needed cheering up or was tired or it came after a book I hated, those ones are just fine.
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