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Loading... Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) (original 2011; edition 2012)by Daniel H. Wilson
Work detailsRobopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson (2011)
On the whole, I liked it, especially once the plot got going. The beginning was really slow and there were too many disturbing, horror-like scenes for my liking. I don't need to see all the ways that robots can kill people. I get it, they turned on humanity, but you've seen one killer car, you've seen them all. The take of robots respecting people as their ancestors and heroic beings, yet wanting to kill most of them anyway was new. It's never explained what the end game was for the robots- have people live in concentration camps? Archos keeps talking of how he wants people as a species to live, but why? Also, because of the structure of the book, the characters could never fully develop. They were more the archetypes than anything else. And since the book starts at the end, you know that humans won, and you even know who lives and dies. Some deep points about humanity are being lost amidst the (fairly gruesome) action. Still, it's pretty entertaining in the second half. Recommended as a light read if you can handle serious violence in your books. (  ) MashaK99 | Jun 11, 2013 |  Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson opens like destruction of Cselkcess from Fullmetal Alchemist. A scientist researching artificial intelligence / artificial life unleashes something he can't control. That something who goes on to call himself Archos, goes on to control all the computerized technology that is wirelessly connected. The first part of the book outlines how Archos tests the computer technology, slowly but surely building his network and his army. Humans across the world start to take notice and the book follows a few of the major heroes of the human / robot wars. The action jumps from place to place but in chronological order. The different transcripts are set up by Cormac Wallace. As these were chapters were set up to be audio transcripts, listening to the book on audio (even performed by a solo actor) made sense. For me Robopocalypse was long needed slap to the three laws of robotics. While early on there is some naive trust of the machinery and robots, the most observant of the humans begin to put two and two together. Robots, like any other software driven thing, can be hacked. Like Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist, unusual alliances develop as the war progresses. In place of the homunculi, there are the man made robots and other computer driven technology. Then there come the chimera, or in this case, the transhumans. Finally, like Grin and Selim, there are those robots who supersede their original programming and begin to act on their own. With their free will comes a chance to co-exist with the transhumans and humans. (  ) pussreboots | Apr 24, 2013 | This book was great. I really enjoyed it! It has a little "Terminator" feel as you might expect, but it is quite different. I was a bit concerned after reading a not so flattering review mentioning the format. The story is told from various points of view, chapter by chapter as chronicled by a soldoer after tbe war. But, personally I really enjoyed the way the story was told. My only negative was the fact tnat the author sometimes changed from first person to third person, or vice versa, what seemed like arbitrarily at times. This was a little confusing now and then. Otherwise, I loved this book and recommend it to anyone who might like the genre. (  ) Ameliapei | Apr 18, 2013 | Read on May 15, 2011 Super fun read. It's a combination of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (instead of survivor stories, it's heroes), Transformers (an allspark-like thing), Terminator (minus the time travel), The Passage (end of the world, plus a cross country journey - though this is a much faster read). If you like any of the above mentioned stuff, you'll like this book...plus, read it now before the movie starts casting. Steven Spielberg is already scheduled to direct the film! (  ) melissarochelle | Apr 10, 2013 | Robopocalypse is basically World War Z, but with robots instead of zombies. I'm afraid that's probably a spoiler. That's the way it's told and the tone of it and everything else, except it's not quite as global as World War Z. At first I was quite absorbed -- I was especially interested in Mr Takeo Nomura and Mikiko, but most of the story revolved around the USA, which gets... wearing. To its credit, it did involve Native Americans in a prominent role, though I have no idea how well those aspects were handled. I've also seen a more subtle robots-achieve-awareness-and-their-creators-are-frightened-and-try-to-kill-them storyline fairly recently, where things aren't as morally clear cut. It's called Mass Effect, and the third game is particularly relevant, and it is well worth playing. (Except, for my lights, just turn the game off before the end of it. There's a reason I own this shirt.) The issue of the geth vs. the quarians is one I was very glad to explore because the game allowed subtlety: this book sort of does, in that you end up with part-robot people and robots who achieve a separate state of awareness and can oppose the evil bad robots, but the fact that you clearly have evil bad robots kind of ruins that. Also, this isn't really a novel. The only characters I really cared about were Mr Takeo Nomura and Laura Perez's family, and even then, the style of the book makes it difficult to be really invested. (  ) shanaqui | Apr 9, 2013 |
 Wilson also sets up images of grand terror, then doesn’t know what to do with them; he’s too focused on his central storyline of how the war was lost, then won. Brief mentions of terrifying work camps where robots experiment on humans don’t get much weight, and the book spends minimal time explaining how independent human communities function in the post-robot-uprising world. It’s telling that the book’s best section—a brief tale of men sent to the remote wilderness to drill a hole, realizing they’re there at the behest of the devil himself—ends with broad fatalities.  There’s an unfortunate sameness to the characters, whether rough-and-ready brothers in their 30s (there’s an inside joke here to Wilson’s 2010 battling-brothers book Bro-Jitsu) or an 11-year-old girl with an unlikely role to play in the proceedings or a battle android unaffiliated with either side (another inside joke, to a toy the author bought on the night of his first date with his now wife) who surely will star in the book’s sequel. Maybe there’s a message in this sameness, that humanity is itself a character to be celebrated, just as perhaps all technology, every buttoned and Bluetoothed object that makes our life easier, is to be scrutinized and respected.  Still, Robopocalypse was an enjoyable read, well worth the wait. It’s got a great plot and villain and conversations between man and machine that really made me think. Some will likely label it a cautionary tale, but I won’t go that far.  It's more than just a screenplay, though, and worth the time to read. There are a few beautiful moments of writing throughout "Robopocalypse" that make it a worthy addition to the canon of robot apocalypse books, movies and comics that have come before. It's worth reading before Spielberg's version of Robopocalypse hits screens in 2013 — and before the army of factory-built roboclones starts to arrive. B+
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385533853, Hardcover)They are in your house. They are in your car. They are in the skies…Now they’re coming for you. (retrieved from Amazon Wed, 20 Apr 2011 23:29:54 -0400) Two decades into the future humans are battling for their very survival when a powerful AI computer goes rogue, and all the machines on Earth rebel against their human controllers. The machines believe that the planet would be better off without humans, and that robots would be better caretakers of the Earth's ecology.… (more) (summary from another edition) |
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