“Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for …
“Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.”—Goodreads
Bobiverse Series: 1. We Are Legion: (We Are Bob) 2. For We Are Many 3. All These Worlds 4. Heaven’s River
mp3 cd
English language
Published Dec. 27, 2016 by Audible Studios on Brilliance, Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio.
This was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it! A bit of a Mary Sue protagonist, but there's so many creative and fun twists and turns that is thoroughly enjoyable throughout.
Soooo, ok. It's a story about Bob, a tech bro whose biggest problem in the world is that his girlfriend cheated on him, who dies suddenly, gets frozen (he made the contract just in time) and awakens as a computer program property of the laughable theocracy the US developed into.
None of the politics are very deep – FAITH is characterised by mean priests, lots of bomb-y infighting and silly acronyms, there is no word about marginalised groups. Which works out just fine, since it is mostly the scenic backdrop for Bob.
Sent into space as the AI pilot for a self replicating space probe, Bob gets to live all his nerd dreams. Of course, as a former engineer and scifi convention goer, he is uniquely qualified for all the tasks in the universe. He is the programmer, designer and strategic mastermind needed in any situation he enters. …
Soooo, ok. It's a story about Bob, a tech bro whose biggest problem in the world is that his girlfriend cheated on him, who dies suddenly, gets frozen (he made the contract just in time) and awakens as a computer program property of the laughable theocracy the US developed into.
None of the politics are very deep – FAITH is characterised by mean priests, lots of bomb-y infighting and silly acronyms, there is no word about marginalised groups. Which works out just fine, since it is mostly the scenic backdrop for Bob.
Sent into space as the AI pilot for a self replicating space probe, Bob gets to live all his nerd dreams. Of course, as a former engineer and scifi convention goer, he is uniquely qualified for all the tasks in the universe. He is the programmer, designer and strategic mastermind needed in any situation he enters. He gets to do tons of fun and sometimes questionable things – improve on the design of his space craft, invent subspace communication, discover a species in their stone age and play god to them.
Except, and this is what makes it fun to read, it's not all him, not Bob. Bob self-replicates as planned, and it is immediately clear that the others aren't just copies of him, they all have their own quirks and interests and go for different roles in their big explory space adventure. So yes, it is a very plural story, I'm glad to report. Not just in this way, also, like, they create some more characters in their VR environments, and one certainly acquires a personality.
So like. This is not deep. This is a light-hearted exploration of scifi cliches and a bunch of quick answers to big questions, all via a generic yet likable cast of Bobs. It's a lot of "eh, let's see what happens" and hand waving on a cosmic scale with varying degrees of accountability. I really enjoyed it, I don't remember another so deeply the-opposite-of-diverse story that I enjoyed so much. I think I'll go for part two!
