Friday

Friday is a science fiction novel by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1982.

The novel is narrated by Friday Jones, a combat courier who carries material that cannot be trusted to a network, in a twenty-first century where the United States has broken up into smaller states and the settled parts of the Solar System have politics of their own. Artificial people like her are property in some places and illegal in others, and Friday passes as human wherever she can. The plot turns on a delivery that arrives at a moment of crisis: a revolution, a resettlement, and an offer to join an expedition to a new colony. Heinlein uses the story to argue about what a person is, and Friday's competence and her loneliness are both part of the argument, along with a great deal of travel and technical conversation.

The novel was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and it belongs to the later part of the author's career, when his books had become longer and more discursive.