3 1/2 stars. I am surprised that I liked this book so much. I read Heinlein's more well known books Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love back when I was a teenager and frankly don't remember much about them. I do remember that I liked them. So, when I ran across mention of his book "Friday", I thought I'd give it a shot as it sounded right up my alley, futuristic, cyberpunkish with a kick ass female main character. When I first picked it up and all throughout reading it, I was under the assumption that it was written back in the 50s or 60s and, like many of the books written back then, the blatant sexism was so...blatant. And therefore, you have to take it with a grain of salt, etc. since it was such a different time back then. But then to my surprise, as I was writing this review, I discovered Heinlein had actually written this later in his writing career, in 1982, winning a Hugo award for it in 1983, over twenty years after "Stranger in a Strange Land". So, Heinlein didn't have the excuse of the times so much after all. He was just probably sort of a misogynistic prick. Fortunately, he could also tell a good story. 
 (view spoiler)[ Heinlein tells the story of slightly future dystopic Earth. The U.S. and most of the other major countries have become mostly balkanized, run by massive corporate interests. It is told through his character Friday Baldwin, aka Friday Jones, aka Marjorie Baldwin, aka Marjorie Friday Baldwin. She had a lot of names partly because she was a courier, a messenger for a certain mysterious rich guy and his secretive, shadowy group. She'd do anything to get her package or message through for her employer and she could be trusted not to ask too much or break any of his secrets. Friday is also an AP, an artificial person, artificially born and genetically engineered by her creator and employer "Kettle-bellied" Baldwin (whom she knows only as "Boss") to be superhuman, smarter, faster, stronger than mere humans. The U.S. and most of the major countries are a curious mix of a world that still uses horse and buggy and riverboats to get around, human couriers instead of encrypted email, etc. but also has super sonic tubes, a bean stalk to the moon and speed of light spaceships and space colonies light years away. Friday is also a curious mix. She knows she is an AP, she knows she is different and she is a little ambivalent about the circumstances of her birth ("My mother was a test tube....my father was a knife" This was sort of a secret handshake among APs). APs in general are discriminated against in this future Earth. So, she struggles between keeping her identity secret and wanting to come clean and face the rest of humankind's silly hypocrisy. Friday is, in my opinion, also a contradiction, between what Heinlein's idea of what a super woman would be...super smart, super strong, super sexy, super willing to engage in free, open sex with whomever, female or male; and with what Heinlein really thought of women in general...they were flighty, mostly helpless (even if superhuman), subject to whim and worried more about fashion and whether someone likes them or not, and always making themselves secondary to the man's wishes. A bit dated and old-fashioned thinking("Oh, would you?--Miss--Mrs. Tomosawa -- is it Miss or Mrs.?...I could and I would and it's Mrs. It had better be; I have a son as old as you are."). This made Friday a very complex and interesting person but not very super in my eyes. (hide spoiler)] 
 Heinlein did tell a intriguing, fast-paced story full of cyberpunk themes and new technological ideas....the shipstone, space travel, genetic engineering, and, what I believe is a very detailed rendering of Google and the internet which is pretty interesting since Google didn't form until 1996, 14 years after this book was written ("Under "retrieval" I punched "Imperium" and "Mississippi River" and "Vicksburg" as singles, each pair, and the triple. Negative. I added in the names of the two vessels and tried all the combinations..."). Overall I enjoyed the book even though some of Heinlein's characterizations and philosophies made me gag a little and even though the ending disappointed me a bit ((view spoiler)[ Friday ended up migrating to another planet, sort of Earth circa 1800s, and living a extremely boring 50s kind of housewife-life in a open marriage kind of arrangement with her family of new friends and the man (who ended up being an AP as well) who raped her at the beginning of the book. Oops. sorry. I just gagged a bit (hide spoiler)]).