Review Me Twice - Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson

See the great thing about working at my job is sometimes, you just trip over great books.  This time, I happened to trip over a great book's sequel.

This is the cover to Robogenesis, the sequel to Robopocalypse.

Awesome, right?  I thought so too, and after looking at it for weeks, I finally picked it up and read the inside cover... only to discover that I had to read a different one first.  I mentioned this to a co-worker, who immediately told me I should read Robopocalypse because I would enjoy it.

And I did so much!  It has very much a World War Z feel to it (which Alex and I ADORE), in the sense that it's lots of people's stories about how humanity came together and fought the machines.  And Wilson's writing is great.  He keeps you on edge and you can't really seem to put the book down because you REALLY want to know what's going to happen.

Even though it's one of those books that tells you what's going to happen on page one.

Also, Wilson wins for my favorite quote of the year:

"Stop.  You have to stop.  You're making a mistake.  We'll never give up Archos.  We'll destroy you."
"A threat?"
"A warning.  We aren't what we seem.  Human beings will do anything to live.  Anything."

Archos is the computer that starts it all, that goes after all the humans and starts to kill them, eradicate them.  And here, right in the very beginning, his creator warns him.  The machines aren't going to win.  Humanity is going to win, because at the end of the day, we never stop.  And I just LOVED that whole quote, the whole exchange, because it just rang so true.  It happens in every day life, in movies, in books.  There are a million accounts of humans fighting until the bitter end in a way that other animals just... don't.

Really, the book was just well done.  It wasn't over the top.  It wasn't made to seem unrealistic.  This made me feel like a Robot apocalypse could actually happen.

If you recall, I mentioned on Wednesday that I don't much care for stories about robots in general, especially robot uprisings. It's just not my thing. I find it really interesting, actually, that I probably would have written a very different post for yesterday if I had written it before I finished Robopocalypse. Because I loved this book.

It is absolutely the World War Z of robot stories. I believe, if given the chance, it could bring about a renewal of interest in robot fiction. It has the multiple, interconnected perspectives, worldwide scope, disaster content, and writing pace of World War Z, which were some of the things that made WWZ better than most zombie fiction.

This will undoubtedly be one of my "best books we read in 2014" picks.

Why Artificial Intelligence Is Scary

When you read about a robot uprising (like the one in this week's review book, Robopocalypse), what you're usually really reading about is artificial intelligence taking over all the robots.

Most great horror revolves around the concept of losing humanity. Zombies are scary because they used to be human and they still mostly look human, but what essentially makes them human is gone. The same thing goes for vampires. And reanimated mummies, if that's your thing. Robots have the opposite thing going for them... they were not human, then we gave them what is the thing that makes us essentially human (however you define it: emotions, love, dreaming, etc.).

Another scary thing about robots is that we are responsible for them. Zombies are sometimes created by humanity (lab-created viruses are especially popular in the current literature) and anything arcane can be attributed to someone messing with magical objects or reading willy-nilly from spellbooks. But robots are 100% undoubtedly man-made, and so is artificial intelligence. We brought it on ourselves, so it was preventable, and that's part of why it's so terrifying.

It's scary for one other huge reason, too: they are meant to become smarter than us. With everything at a robot brain's disposal, it would be nigh impossible for them not to become smarter than humans. Their interconnectedness and enormous processing power allows them to think and experience and feel at a much greater rate than humans, making them superior to us in so many ways (combat, puzzle-solving, reflexes, and so on).

All I'm saying is, maybe you shouldn't beat the crap out of the printer when it jams. Someday it might hit back.

Favorite Man Vs. Machine Stories

I don't like robot stories, as a general rule. I have absolutely zero interest in the Terminator movies, and the easiest way to make me not want to read a book (other than telling me it's written by a televangelist) is to use the phrase "robot uprising." Seriously... robots just don't do it for me.

Saga is a comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. I recently read all three currently existing graphic novel volumes as part of my goal to read everything Vaughan has written before meeting him at NY Comic Con. It's about a huge interplanetary war, mainly between the home planets of the two main characters you see up there on the cover. You may notice they have a baby with them. This is why both their homeworlds want to hunt them down (extreme fraternizing with the enemy).

You may be saying, "Alex, I know you said you don't much care for robot stories, but you still should be talking about a robot story here." Well, one side of the war has joined forces with the Robot Kingdom. Prince Robot IV is one of the major pursuers of the family, and he looks like this:

So while the "man" in question is a family consisting of a women with wings, a man with horns and magical abilities, and their hybrid daughter, they are certainly up against a formidable machine.

It's always my favorite weeks when I get to tell you about books that I've never told you about before.

I love Crichton.  I mean, I honestly don't think I've read anything by him that I didn't like.  This was probably my least favorite book by him and I still REALLY liked it.  Long story short, humans create nano-bots and these nano-bots get minds of their own and start taking over everything.  They become a threat in a way that only Crichton could make them.  

I like it because while it is the classic man vs. machine, cautionary "be careful what you create" tale, it's not preachy.  And it's fascinating and thrilling and has you on the edge of your seat constantly wondering, "Oh, my God, are they going to die?  Are they next?  No, Crichton, YOU CAN'T KILL HIM!!  I LIKED HIM!!"

Really, Joss Whedon has nothing on Crichton.

Man's Curiosity (and why it makes for a good story)

Let's face it: more often than not, when we're reading a book, a book's plot comes because we're just too.  Damn.  Curious.  This week's book, Robopocalypse, comes because a professor wanted to create and AI that could work WITH mankind, but continually made ones that wanted to take it over (14 of them, in fact), until he slipped up and couldn't control it (I don't mind telling you this because I found this out about 20 pages into the book.  Pretty non-spoilery.)

Ayn Rand's book, Anthem, that we reviewed a few weeks ago was all about how we had shoved ourselves back into the stone age because of knowing too much, and therefore we then punished people who were curious.

We see the theme every where (Martial Chronicles: We destroyed the Martians and then ourselves.)  So why do we keep seeing it?  And better yet, why do we, as readers, keep reading it?

There's not a lot better, in my book, that apocalyptic fiction, which is what a lot of this is.  It's the idea that humanity became too ambitious and destroyed ourselves and bam, here we are (Time Machine anyone?)  And yet, in all these stories, we always seem to be able to pull ourselves back out of the hole.  The Martian Chronicles a few families survive.  The Time Machine, they destroy the enemy and are able to progress as a society.  As a reader, we never really know if the author is telling us to hold ourselves back, because we could destroy ourselves, or to let loose, because at the end of the day, the Human Race is enduring and we're going to survive in the end anyway.

That's part of the reason that we read these books.  We, as a species, are absurdly attracted to disasters.  How many times have you slowed down and taken a good long look at the accident on the side of the road on your way home?




Stop lying you have too.



The truth of the matter is, for some weird reason, we are attracted to this disaster like moths to the flame.  It makes sense that we would be attracted to it in our literature too.  Think about the non-fiction that you read.  Now how much of that is about the Holocaust?  Or scandal?  Or a tragedy of history?  My two most favorite time periods to read about?  The Romanov Family (everyone is tragically murdered) and Tudor England (Henry VIII kills all his wives so that he can sleep with some new woman.  To be fair, I like to read about his daughter also, who brought about an English Golden Age, but mostly it's the beheading Man-Whore ways of Henry.)

The apocalypse almost has its own sub-genre in sci-fi/fantasy.  You see so much of it, robot uprisings, zombie take overs, nuclear warfare, that it could have a section all on its own titled "end of the world."  And it would probably be the best selling section.

Author Bio: Daniel Wilson

From Wilson's website

Daniel H. Wilson wrote this week's review book: Robopocalypse. He has written seven other books, which all seem to be about robots. This could have something to do with the fact that he got a PhD in Robotics, and Master's in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. So he knows the subject matter pretty well.

Robopocalypse now has a sequel, Robogenesis, plus it has been picked up by DreamWorks and it is rumored that Steven Spielberg will direct. So we have that to look forward to!