History Literature / Friday

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Friday deduces that, since her employers [[spoiler:tricked her into [[ButICantBePregnant being implanted with an embryo]] rather than transporting it in stasis in her belly-button compartment]], she will be conveniently killed at the conclusion of her mission. Nor can she spill the beans because the ship's captain would already be in on the scam, and she can't bring herself to [[spoiler:abort the baby]]. So she decides to TakeAThirdOption by jumping ship.

* ArtificialHumans: Friday is one.

So she flies to her home in NewZealand, where she is one of about eight spouses in a group marriage. She isn't there often, but she wanted a place to call home. One of her adoptive children scandalizes the family by starting a relation with a minority. Friday tries to make it better by admitting that she's an artificial human, since these are also prejudiced against. Then she finds out, the hard way, that being a married artificial human in New Zealand is illegal, and virtually the next thing she knows, she's thrown out of the group marriage, crashing with a handsome Quebecois airline/spacecraft pilot she met and his significant others. And ''that's'' when a massive wave of terrorist attacks, "Red Thursday", plunges the world into chaos.

So she flies to her home in New Zealand, where she is one of about eight spouses in a group marriage. She isn't there often, but she wanted a place to call home. One of her adoptive children scandalizes the family by starting a relation with a minority. Friday tries to make it better by admitting that she's an artificial human, since these are also prejudiced against. Then she finds out, the hard way, that being a married artificial human in New Zealand is illegal, and virtually the next thing she knows, she's thrown out of the group marriage, crashing with a handsome Quebecois airline/spacecraft pilot she met and his significant others. And ''that's'' when a massive wave of terrorist attacks, "Red Thursday", plunges the world into chaos.

* MedicalRapeAndImpregnate: How Friday ends up pregnant. She thinks she'll be carrying the embryo as a package, not as a bun in the oven.

* ShootTheMessenger: What's going to happen to Friday after she delivers the baby, unless she can get away.

* ASimplePlan: More than once.

* SurveillanceDrone: The Public Eyes; Friday's an old hand at dealing with them.
* TortureAlwaysWorks: DiscussedTrope. Friday tells everything when she's tortured early in the book, both to preserve her mind and because she doesn't know what they want to know. The torturers' boss doesn't believe her and escalates the torture anyway -- and so Friday writes him off as an amateur.
* TreasureChestCavity: Friday's pouch.
* TrialBalloonQuestion

* TruthSerum: When Friday is captured by Boss' enemies, they use a truth drug on her to make her spill the beans about her mission. This annoys her because she's already told them everything she knows, so their continued refusal to accept this causes her to write them off as amateurs.

* VictimFallsForRapist: One of the most controversial aspects of the novel -- [[spoiler:Friday eventually marries (among other people) Percival, one of the agents who raped her at the beginning of the novel. Despite Percy admitting that he enjoyed it, Friday decides that he was a PunchClockVillain and that it was NothingPersonal. Also, he was considerate to her in some respects and did not participate in her subsequent torture.]] Friday also discusses using this trope as a means to [[LooksLikeSheIsEnjoyingIt subvert torturers]] attempting to break an agent.

* GoodBadGirl: Friday is this. Fully trained in sexuality from her time in créche, she is enthusiastically horny and unrestrained by most cultural taboos, including [[GirlOnGirlIsHot girls]]. However, she is very picky about her partners.

* {{Expy}}: "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, of [[StrangerInAStrangeLand Jubal Harshaw]]. The two strongly share the "Wise Man" mentor archetype, while also being gruff old coots who are nevertheless fawned over by their female employees.

* CoversAlwaysLie: On the paperback cover, Friday looks practically Aryan -- blond hair, fair skin -- but the text describes her as having much darker skinned.

In the CanonWelding, this would come sometime after ''TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'' in that book's timeline, but the connection is not necessary.

* ContinuityNod: Although it's not apparent unless you look closely, this novel is set in the same continuity as ''TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'' -- Friday speaks with representatives of Free Luna on several occasions. It also contains nods to an earlier novella -- Friday's boss is Hartley "Kettle Belly" Baldwin from ''Literature/{{Gulf}}'', he has her read a document about the exploits of the protagonists of that work (who were some of her gene donors), and explicitly forbids her to emigrate to the planet where his society of {{Ubermensch}} eventually settled.

!! Tropes:

''Friday'' is a novel by RobertAHeinlein about an artificial human called Friday "Jones", a.k.a. "Marjorie Baldwin". When the novel starts, she is working as a spy/courier for a mysterious organization based in a nation-state centered around Chicago. It gets messy; she reflexively kills someone who ''might'' have been a tail and evades other pursuit that involves blowing up an entire hotel she just left. She finally reaches her home base -- and immediately gets captured by enemy agents and tortured for the information she was carrying, which is not in her head. After finally being freed from that escapade, it is near time for her to consider retiring.

* RapeIsLove: One of the most controversial aspects of the novel -- [[spoiler:Friday eventually marries (among other people) Percival, one of the agents who raped her at the beginning of the novel. Despite Percy admitting that he enjoyed it, Friday decides that he was a PunchClockVillain and that it was NothingPersonal. Also, he was considerate to her in some respects and did not participate in her subsequent torture.]] Friday also discusses using this trope as a means to [[LooksLikeSheIsEnjoyingIt subvert torturers]] attempting to break an agent.

* Polyamory: Friday is a member of a group marriage as the story begins, gets kicked out of it because of FantasticRacism, and enters another at the end.

* TruthSerum: When Friday is captured by Boss' enemies, they use a truth drug on her to make her tell them about Boss' operations. It doesn't work on her.

* BiTheWay: When Friday is in Canada with the polygamous family (two husbands, one wife), it's very clear that, while she's attracted to the husband who brought her there, she's in LoveatFirstSight with the wife, Janet. She kills a man for simply threatening Janet. And it's equally clear that Janet reciprocates and that it's not platonic.

* ConvenientlyUnverifiableCoverStory: Done by Friday and many other runaway or liberated "artificial persons" who need cover stories. Her "birthplace" is Seattle (destroyed in an earthquake) and Friday cynically comments that the recent destruction of Acapulco in a corporate war means that a lot of artificial persons will end up being "born" there as well.

* TenchiSolution: Friday ends up marrying all her paramours.

* MiningAccidentOnTroy: Done by Friday and many other runaway or liberated "artificial persons" who need cover stories. Her "birthplace" is Seattle (destroyed in an earthquake) and Friday cynically comments that the recent destruction of Acapulco in a corporate war means that a lot of artificial persons will end up being "born" there as well.

* GattacaBabies: Humanity has learned to grow custom-tailored humans and other creatures; these are known as "Artificial Persons" if they are superficially human and "Living Artifacts" if they are clearly not human. Both are subject to a great deal of FantasticRacism; Friday's an AP, and suffers from a crushing inferiority neurosis because of it.

->My mother was a test tube\\
My father was a knife...

* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:Although Friday's left on a colony world without the technology to make her fertile, she bears the designer royal baby she was hired to deliver and raises it as her own child alongside [[{{Nakama}} the other members of her group marriage]].]]