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3.88 of 5 stars 3.88  ·  rating details  ·  162 ratings  ·  36 reviews
The three basic human needs are food, water…and shelter. But in the late 21st century, compassion is a crime. You can get your memories wiped just for trying to help.

Papa Preston Walford's world doesn't allow for coincidences. Accidents. Secrets in the backs of closets. Or the needs of his own daughter.

Meredith Preston has reason to seek shelter. She needs protection from...more
ebook, 576 pages
Published June 12th 2007 by Tor Books (first published 2007)
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Ok, I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but it had so many things that made it perfect for me to read: set in San Francisco (with lots of references to the city), AI and robots, social work-type stuff... It did have flaws, but they're not worth listing because I loved it anyway. Susan Palwick is like Maureen McHugh in that their science fiction feels like it was written by a woman without being heavy-handed about it. Awesomeness.
Feb 15, 2010 martha rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to martha by: Kris
Shelves: genre, 2010
I wish I could rate each half of this book differently. The first half is SO SLOW; it needs some serious weed-whack editing and could stand to be much, much shorter, without losing anything of value. I'm glad I plowed through, though, because the second half was really gripping, and not at all what I expected the book to be about.

Cool things contained herein: AIs, Roomba-descendant bots, San Francisco in the mid-21st century, global pandemics, social services issues, characters of color, the evo...more
Roberta is on parole for "excessive altruism" when Meredith reenters her life, prompting both to reflect on the events which drew them together: a devastating virus, Preston, first man translated into virtual existence, and their attempts to protect Nicholas and Fred, an unstable child and an artificial intelligence. Shelter has a number of flaws: over-explained backstory, a too-simple conclusion, and heavy-handed themes. Nonetheless it's a brave and intelligent book. The plotline is intriguing...more
Feb 26, 2010 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Kelly by: martha
Initially difficult to get into; I might not have continued to make the effort if Martha hadn't recommended it. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that amnesia is a big plot point, and I realized toward the end of the book that trying to read the first 50-ish pages makes you feel like an amnesiac. Not sure if that was intentional. Ending petered out a little bit, but the meat of the book itself was pretty fantastic. Between this and The Year of the Flood, starting to wonder if dystopic eco-evan...more
Adore Fred. Hate Preston. Book needs more Roberta and less Meredith. Knotty and thoughtful on sentience, ecology, faith, personality (& biochemistry), homes, safety, and love. Nicholas breaks my heart. Positioning of Africa more thoughtful than initially apparent.
Una persona puede, sólo por vivir, dañar a otro ser humano profundamente.

Hay libros que descubres por casualidad y que según vas leyendo te das cuenta de que se están convirtiendo en esos libros especiales que recordarás durante mucho tiempo y a los que volverás cada cierto tiempo.

En mi caso es lo que ha ocurrido con Shelter. La historia nos sitúa en un futuro próximo, en una sociedad con tres características principales. Es una sociedad donde las IAs son una realidad y se debate entre considera...more
Argh, I just wrote a whole long review of this book and lost it. I'm not going to write it again but here's the main reason this near future science fiction novel about AI and brainwiping and "extreme altruism" as a psychological disorder and two girls, one wealthy and one orphaned, getting a bad disease and being in isolation for months and then as adults both dealing with a psychologically-disturbed 5 year old only gets 3 stars despite some interesting ideas and a pretty good plot: Too many of...more
Jeffrey Paris [was Infinite Tasks]
A remarkably well-conceived and well-crafted novel! Palwick imagines a plague that, once it has ravaged Africa, is sufficiently contained to be able to alter brain chemistry and even "mindwipe" undesirables who can then (usually) be re-socialized from scratch. Add in the development of AI entities, smart-bots, and translated consciousnesses (recording memories while alive and then "translating" them to live on in virtual space), and all the tools are in place for a solid speculative investigatio...more
The one where Roberta lost her parents to a drug-resistant disease, and Meredith's father was "translated" so that his intelligence lives on in a virtual world, conversing with an intelligent house while giant storms ravage San Francisco.

When I gave myself permission to abandon this after a hundred pages, I was so relieved, because by that time I hated every single character, including the robots.

It wasn't exactly that they were unsympathetic; it was just that, instead of meaningful, active co...more
About 1/3 of the way through the book, I told my mother she had to read it. About 2/3 of the way through, I regretted my recommendation to her, specifically. When I finished the last page and closed the book, I realized that this is one of those books where I couldn't be sure if a person would love it or hate it, though I doubt there would be much middle ground.
I cared about the characters and the story, even though there might have been a bit of a "can't look away from the train wreck" caring t...more
I would say that most books I read about dystopian futures end up scaring the pants off of me. The idea that our society could develop into something like the one described in this book is TERRIFYING. I can already see the threads of this future in our society today, which makes it all the more chilling.

It's a story set forty years in the future, AIs have become common place enough that large portions of the population are lobbying to grant them personhood. A deadly virus is raging through Afri...more
I didn't know what this book was about before I started reading it. I only picked it up because it was written by Susan Palwick, whose short story collection, The Fate of Mice, I'd recently read and loved.

I think if I did know what this was about, I might not have read it. It doesn't have anything in particular in here that would make me like it. A passing minor character who's intersexed, and somewhat major character who's lesbian, but otherwise.. nope.

It takes place in the future, with conflic...more
I wanted to like this book more, it's premise is so intriguing, unfortunately the writing style frequently felt stilted and I felt like I was being hit over the head with "SIGNIFICANT MESSAGES". Also, pieces of the setting and description were jarring -- telephone technology 40 years in the future that looks dated, even two years after the book's publication (will land-lines really still be so common? Will people really talk about "cell phones"?); the references to a monolithic "Africa" which se...more
☁ Jo Ann ☂
This book could have been cut down 200 pages. I know, I'm always the first one to complain if the author doesn't give enough back story to let you know what's going on, but in this case less would have been acceptable. For some reason the author seemed think that we needed to know all about the childhood and relationship woes of both main characters: Meredith and Roberta. Pages and pages full. Even knowing their personal history I still didn't care much for them. Just not very likable personalit...more
I was very disappointed in this adult science fiction novel. I loved the award winner The Necessary Beggar, but I couldn't' even finish this one. I managed 164 pages over two days while I was on vacation, and had to give up. After quitting Shelter, I read two books in one day.[return][return]basically, there is a house with artificial intelligence who offers shelter to a homeless man who rescues cats and has had his memory erased. This has something to do with Meredith, a young girl who barely s...more
Eva Mitnick
It's the second half of the 21st century and three Big Issues are affecting the lives of a handful of San Francisco residents - a terrible pandemic called CV, the question of whether a being with Artificial Intelligence should be considered human or a machine, and a procedure called mindwiping, which destroys the entire memory and is being used not just for murderers but also for the mentally ill. Although these issues are enmeshed with the plot, it's the thoughts and actions of the characters -...more
Fauna Hartley
This was a long read. There were times when I couldn't put the book down it was so engrossing. Then there were times when I wanted to skim pages and skip ahead. But, was it worth it? Sure.
Ultimately, I liked the distinctly femine tone of the book. I've read other books about AI that seemed to come off too cold and technical for my taste. This story centers around altruism, empathy and compassion and where that fits within an increasingly artificial world. I also found the presence of faith intri...more
Set in a near-future San Francisco that's all too real and Kafkaesque, this gripping novel explores what it means to be human, and to be connected to family. As artificial intelligence progresses the line between human and machine blurs, and what it means to be human and compassionate takes on a new dimension.

Excellent and thought-provoking.
I read this book last night, starting at about 5:00, pausing briefly, and fishing around 2:00 this morning. That should tell you something--it's an absorbing read. I think Palwick's great strengths as a writer are her characters and her plot structures; some of the former make me wish I could meet them (and others make me hope I never do), and the way she weaves together various strands of the narrative keeps the plot moving forward with vivid, but not heavy-handed, suspense.
I picked up this book on a whim from the "staff pick" table at our local library and I'm glad I did. Set in a world with AI beings and people who have "transferred" their consciousness onto the web, Shelter paints a bleak future where brain-wiping is commonly prescribed for seemingly minor social transgressions. It is the connection between the characters, both human and non-human, that really count in this story and make the book such a good read.
Mary Peret
A tale of love and loss in a future where AI is possible and real. Can a person live forever as an uploaded series of memories? Can a machine help a seriously disturbed child heal? What does a mother do when all of the decisions she has made to help her child hurt other people? According to to Susan Palwick, all human beings seek one basic need -- shelter. A worthwhile read with a genuine attempt to ask some very big questions.
Pretty good--I haven't read much SF lately. Mr. Rogers *would* make a perfect AI personality. Biggest complaint: At the end, the characters gave up the skeptical POV that had pervaded the rest of the book, and became dreadfully earnest. It's nice to give us a happy ending, but it was less satisfying.

Bumped down from 5 stars because the ending is just a little too tidy. Otherwise this was a wonderful book - absorbing, thought-provoking, believable (aside from the ending)... highly recommended for anyone. (Even non-SF fans would likely enjoy it, because it's mainly about people, not gadgets).
Okay, so I've been reading this between feedings of my brand new baby, so my concentration levels have not been at normal levels. Held my interest, and raised some interesting questions about memory, personality, what makes a person a person, and mental health issues.
Phil Hollenback
Abandoning this one half way through. The initial setup was great, and the characters are very well do ne. However, this book just piles disaster upon horrible disaster. Eventually it just got to be too much for me and I quit.
I really enjoyed this book, and it was full of interesting ideas and realistically flawed characters. However, it did have massive plotting and structural problems that prevent me from giving it a higher rating.
Sue Milo
Long, slow read. Interesting, though. What would have happened if Meredith had reported Nicholas before his final act, would the wiping have gone better? Would he have been less damaged?
Somewhat interesting AI narrative, a bit social-worker-y in tone. If you like to read about people talking to their houses (He, She, & It springs to mind) you might enjoy this.
Nominally science fiction, but really a slow-build, heartfelt tale about love and loneliness and interconnectedness. I loved it, but it's definitely not for everyone.
This book has an awesome premise...I think. I didn't get more than 50 pages into it, as it started triggering me. I'd like to read it completely some day.
Susan Palwick is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she teaches writing and literature. Her first novel, Flying in Place (1992), won the Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Novel, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
More about Susan Palwick...
Flying in Place The Necessary Beggar The Fate of Mice Mending the Moon Homecoming: A Tor.Com Original

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