Thursday, September 1, 2016

Robopocalypse (Robopocalypse #1) / Daniel H. Wilson / 368 pgs

I picked up this book because I heard that it was a lot like World War Z but with robots. That's true in some sense. Archos is the first sentient robot in a near future where robots are used in the military, for domestic work, and for factory work. Archos quickly kills the scientist who makes him and sets about with the destruction of mankind. The book is written from the perspective of a man, Cormac Wallace, who was there when Archos is finally defeated. He finds a box that contains video and audio from several different humans who were instrumental in bringing about the defeat of the robots. Cormac transcribes everything he sees and hears in order to create a record of the war for future generations.

I think in the end, I wasn't as impressed with the book as I had hoped I would be. Perhaps my hopes were too high? A book about an unstoppable force that the humans must try to stop in order to survive, written in the style of interviews and action caught on camera a la "World War Z" sounded pretty awesome, but that's pretty much where the comparison has to stop. There are too many mistakes in this book. It was sloppily written. If one decided to write down in a book everything they saw and heard from a box that recorded so much human and robot interaction, you would not write it down in the present tense. Also, if you are transcribing a person who was talking, that person would not be using SO MANY FREAKING ADJECTIVES in their speech. It just wasn't realistic. Unlike zombies, the idea of robots taking over the world is not nearly as far-fetched, so I wanted some realism. The only time I really felt like I got it was in the first chapter when Archos becomes sentient and interacts with his creator. After that, it was all downhill. Asimov remains the King of Robots, in my opinion. I won't be reading the sequel.

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