History Literature / Friday

* PublicSecretMessage: In Vancouver, Friday is reading the personal ads in a newspaper and sees an ad that says "W.K.-Make your will. You have only a week to live. A.C.B." More than a week later she sees another ad in a Vicksburg, Mississippi newspaper that says "W.K.-Make your will. You have only ten days to live. A.C.B." Her traveling companion Georges realizes that the messages are a code - the first message meant "number seven" (1 week = 7 days), while the second message meant "number ten".

* SignatureStyle: The opening of the novel is classic Heinlein in that it starts InMediaRes and reveals the protagonist's occupation and personality through first-person narration while she's killing people and evading capture.

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

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: When Friday is raped by her captors, her thoughts are mere annoyance that they'd think it would traumatize her.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Effectively discussed when Ian Tormey (the ballistic shuttle pilot) discusses proposals to engineer Living Artifact pilots to replace humans. The conclusion he reaches is that the risk of obviously non-human beings becoming too alienated from humanity to be responsible for the lives of humans is too high.

* 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]], [[HeKnowsTooMuch 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.

* BiTheWay: Friday, while enthusiastically heterosexual, falls in LoveAtFirstSight with Janet when she meets Ian Tormey's family. This causes her a great deal of confusion because she hasn't ever been attracted to a woman before and rejects (frequent) propositions from them. When she quizzes her Boss about it, he replies that "all humans have soi-disant mixed-up genes; there are two kinds of people: those who know this, and those who don't." Nevertheless, Friday's feelings remain strongly in the IfItsYouItsOkay camp. Very few other main characters are so inhibited, however.
** Friday does end up shacking up with Goldie (one of her several female suitors) for a while, and specifically says that they were pretty much married. And while she has several kisses with women earlier in the book that she simply puts up with for the sake of practicality, she clearly enjoys making out with her ladies'-maid/chaperon/eventual confederate on board the cruise ship, and it's implied that they did more. Clearly Janet awakened her bisxual urges, but they don't turn off in Janet's absence.

* BiTheWay: Friday, while enthusiastically heterosexual, falls in LoveAtFirstSight with Janet when she meets Ian Tormey's family. This causes her a great deal of confusion because she hasn't ever been attracted to a woman before and rejects (frequent) proposals from them. When she quizzes her Boss about it, he replies that "all humans have soi-disant mixed-up genes; there are two kinds of people: those who know this, and those who don't." Nevertheless, Friday's feelings remain strongly in the IfItsYouItsOkay camp. Very few other main characters are so inhibited, however.

From there, Friday has to survive the chaos of the patchwork of states on the North American continent in order to both stay free, make contact with her organization, and figure out what's happening. This proves extremely difficult...

* FantasticRacism: Not without reason. Since artificial humans can be and often are superior physically and mentally to normal humans, the normal humans fight back with social stigmas and laws against them. Combined with plain racism (although with a somewhat unusual target – “(D)idn’t you hear me? He’s a ''Tongan''.”) to get in the StockAesop racism=bad.

* SpaceElevator: Friday doesn't like riding "beanstalks": "A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic." With a reason. We get a CrypticBackgroundReference thrown in: “‘a skyhook is safer than any ship. The Quito cable was lost through sabotage.’”

* FictionalCurrency: The city-state of Las Vegas is the only "country" in North America whose currency is actually backed by gold. And in the general part of the United States, the currency is called the "crown," and the rule for a courier is, to make sure they have money in case of an emergency, in addition to credit cards, to always have at least "a crown of cash per klick" traveled on one's person, or one crown per kilometer, the equivalent in our world probably of carrying at least $2 per mile.

* SpaceElevator: Friday doesn't like riding "beanstalks": "A cable that goes up into the sky with nothing to hold it up smells too much of magic."

* FantasticRacism: Not without reason. Since artificial humans can be and often are superior physically and mentally to normal humans, the normal humans fight back with social stigmas and laws against them.

Not to be confused with [[Music/{{Friday}} the song]] by Creator/RebeccaBlack.

Not to be confused with the [[Music/{{Friday}}]] song by Creator/RebeccaBlack.

* ArcWords: The couplet listed at the beginning of the article.
* ArtificialHuman: Friday is one.
* ApocalypseHow: Predicted class 3.

* 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 the other members of her group marriage.]]
* BiTheWay: Friday, while enthusiastically heterosexual, falls in LoveAtFirstSight with Janet when she meets Ian Tormey's family in Canada. This causes her a great deal of confusion because she hasn't ever been attracted to a woman before. When she quizzes her Boss about it, he replies that "all humans have soi-disant mixed-up genes; there are two kinds of people: those who know this, and those who don't." Nevertheless, Friday's feelings remain strongly in the IfItsYouItsOkay camp. Very few other main characters are so inhibited, however.
* ButICantBePregnant: Indeed, Friday is very surprised to find out that she's expecting, given that her sterility is permanent without specialized lab equipment. [[spoiler:Turns out that her employer put one over on her and implanted her with the embryo she was supposed to be transporting.]]

* DayOfTheWeekName: Friday.

* DividedStatesOfAmerica: [[BalkanizeMe And Canada]], portrayed as the result of sociopolitical collapse and the schisming of the countries along cultural lines.

* GoodBadGirl: Friday is this. Fully trained in sexuality from her time in créche, she is enthusiastically horny and unrestrained by most cultural taboos. However, she is very picky about her partners and is uncomfortable with lesbians ([[IfItsYouItsOkay until she meets Janet]]).

* IfItsYouItsOkay: Friday feels this way toward Janet; near the end of the novel she falls in love with Tilly/"Shizuko".

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters
* LooksLikeSheIsEnjoyingIt: Friday's method of dealing with torture-by-rape is to intentionally invoke this.
* LoopholeAbuse: There is no rule that the winner of the Golden State lottery has to be a resident.
* MarryThemAll: Friday ends up marrying all her paramours.

* MegaCorp: The Shipstone corporation, which has expanded its monopoly over high-capacity power storage technology into effective control over the entire planet. [[spoiler:Red Thursday and many other incidents turn out to be proxy warfare between factions within the company.]]
** It's mentioned that it's not ''[[LoopholeAbuse technically]]'' a monopoly, since they don't hold any patents or exclusive manufacturing rights, and that the inventor did this on purpose: If he were to patent it, he would have to publicly declare the designs, and allow anyone to manufacture and market their own when the patents expired, whereas if he didn't, it would require years of research to understand how it works and to reverse engineer it because of the complexity of the device. Friday likens demands for the designs to be made public to demanding to be a concert pianist: Anyone can do it, it just takes years of practise.
* MixAndMatchMan: Friday -- she was designed with the genes of Dr. Baldwin and many of his friends and fellow agents.
* MorningSickness: This happens to Friday while onboard the starship H.S. ''Forward''.

* RaceLift: As per usual with a number of Heinlein's works. See CoversAlwaysLie.
* SecretPassage: Beneath "Boss" Baldwin's hideout.

* SignatureStyle

* SpaceOpera: Turns into one at the end, after Friday decides to emigrate offplanet.

* TreasureChestCavity: Friday's belly button pouch.

* TrustPassword: Again, the couplet at the top of this page.

* SpaceElevator: Friday doesn't like riding "beanstalks"; they give her nausea.

* OneRangerOneRiot: Referenced following an attack by a violent cult on a number of Scientologists and Hari Krishnas in an airport. Friday says it took nearly as many Mounties as there were cultists to stop them, as opposed to the usual ratio of One Mountie: One Riot.

** It's mentioned that it's not ''[[LoopholeAbuse technically]]'' a monopoly, since they don't hold any patents or exclusive manufacturing rights because of the complexity of the device, and that the inventor did this on purpose: If he were to patent it, he would have to publicly declare the designs, and allow anyone to manufacture and market their own when the patents expired, whereas if he didn't, it would require years of research to understand how it works and to reverse engineer it. Friday likens demands for the designs to be made public to demanding to be a concert pianist: Anyone can be one, it just takes years of practise.

** It's mentioned that it's not ''[[LoopholeAbuse technically]]'' a monopoly, since they don't hold any patents or exclusive manufacturing rights because of the complexity of the device, and that the inventor did this on purpose: If he were to patent it, he would have to publicly declare the designs, and allow anyone to manufacture and market their own when the patents expired, whereas if he didn't, because it was so complex, it would require years of research to understand how it works and to reverse engineer it. Friday likens demands for the designs to be made public to demanding to be a concert pianist: Anyone can be one, it just takes years of practise.

** It's mentioned that it's not ''[[LoopholesAbuse technically]]'' a monopoly, since they don't hold any patents or exclusive manufacturing rights because of the complexity of the device, and that the inventor did this on purpose: If he were to patent it, he would have to publicly declare the designs, and allow anyone to manufacture and market their own when the patents expired, whereas if he didn't, because it was so complex, it would require years of research to understand how it works and to reverse engineer it. Friday likens demands for the designs to be made public to demanding to be a concert pianist: Anyone can be one, it just takes years of practise.