For We Are Many

This entry in the three-book series is less of a romp than the first because, of course, because the territory is no longer new or fresh; but it's still a hoot and a holler. I had such a great time going back to the Bobiverse! These books are a pleasure to me because their humor resonates with me:

At times like this, I wondered if I hadn’t gone a little overboard with the level of detail in my virtual-reality environment. There was no reason for me to even have nether regions, let alone for them to pucker.

And that should tell you what you need to know about the suitability of the series to your reading needs. If that neither makes you laugh nor gives you a sense of the subject of the books, best you pass them by.

This installment brings show more us past the previously known Bobiverse...the bubble of space that Bob's previously created new selves have gone off to explore...and into contact with more new species. There are new threats, new ways of getting the heck rid of old threats, and plenty of the old threats come around again:

I sincerely hoped that in the fullness of time, they’d have the opportunity to get all bent out of shape about environmentalism.

Seems that "intelligence" is a menace...and maybe VEHEMENT had a point. (Bobiversals will get that.) But there's nothing like a replicant on a mission to make the Universe safe for sentient life. The Bobs come through this book without a hint of middle-book-itis. The action doesn't slack. The stakes don't falter. The pace of the book doesn't dilly-dally and the Bobs, bless 'em, don't shilly-shally as they tackle problems on a greater-than-human timescale. I can't spoiler stuff since the Anti-spoiler Activists get so stroppy about it. But I can say that there's no good reason for someone who liked the first book not to get the second ASAP and there's no reason for someone who didn't like the first book to even consider this one.

As for me, I'm on to book three and might even have bumped this one up a rating point had it not been for the clear affection and acceptance herein shamelessly flaunted for a lifeform utterly unworthy of it:

The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty.

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Bob and his replicas have been traveling the universe for close to 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. A world war has reduced the population of Earth down to a few million people and nuclear winter is setting in, making most of the planet uninhabitable. A new, radical group has surfaced that thinks humanity should be wiped out completely and is doing their utmost to sabotage plans to evacuate the solar system. Off world, explorations continue. There are planets to discover, species to catalog and intelligent life to meet! Bob may have left Earth for a chance to live a solitary life exploring the universe but the responsibilities keep piling up. There's a lot of work to do which means it's time to print some more Bobs.

For We show more Are Many is the second in the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. The story picks up not long after the ending of the first book and the ride is just as much fun. The same dry humor and wit are there, though with a little less of the 80s references. I found myself laughing out loud at times. All of the story lines continue in this installment and begin to pick up complexity as more Bobs are created to handle their ever growing work load, which means additional points of view and a couple more story threads.

Taylor dives deeper into the topic started in book one, what does it mean to be human. Technically the Bobs are not human at all, only AI programs running on highly sophisticated hardware and are immortal. What does that do to your humanity? Does it mean you leave it all behind? The Bob's personalities and world views are starting to diverge more with each generation as some of them see humans as ephemeral, while others have fully embraced their humanity even going to the extent of building androids for themselves. Three of the threads in particular i found quite moving. Homer's story broke my heart.

Also asked is what to do when you encounter intelligent life. Original Bob is faced with the Prime Directive dilemma popularized in Star Trek: how much do you intercede in the affairs of another sentient race? Is it ok to play God and take sides? Original Bob is quite compassionate and cannot sit by passively when a species he's come to love faces extinction. Then what do you do when you encounter hostiles? It definitely adds a wrinkle to the Bob's plans.

I listened to the audio book narrated by Ray Porter. He continues to be excellent. He does such a great job that I forgot at times there was only one person doing the narration.

The story ends on a sad yet hopeful note. I can't wait to see what the Bobs come up with as a solution to The Others. Luckily it's not a long wait as the final book is due in August. show less

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S FOR WE ARE MANY ABOUT?
It's been around 40 years or so since the Bobs started their mission of finding a place for the tiny sliver of humanity that's still eking out a survival on Earth. They've started colonizing one planet and continue to look for others.

On Earth terrorists upset with the evacuation priorities—and some that think humanity should die off—harass the efforts and cause a little trouble. Extra-terrestrial life (some sentient and some others) cause other problems for the Bobs. The Brazilian probes are still trying to attack, too.

Then they encounter an alien space-traveling species—their first. This group (soon dubbed the Others) are enough to make Star show more Trek's the Bord look warm and fuzzy. Naturally, the Bobs quickly annoy them.

But really, the biggest problem comes from within. The Bobs are having a hard time coping with their virtual invulnerability as they deal with humans (and others) who aren't so long-lived. Some of the Bobs begin calling them "ephemerals" as they try to find ways to cope. Whatever the problems that come from their opponents throughout the universe, it looks like this one may be the biggest challenge.

RAY PORTER'S NARRATION
Porter was the deciding factor for me trying out the series in the first place, and he'd be enough of a reason to stick around. I don't need him to be—the story and characters are really what are keeping me around—but him doing narrating is a nice bonus.

I really don't know what to say beyond that—I'm becoming a real Porter fan here (and got excited a couple of days ago when I saw he's done some work on another series I just started).

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT FOR WE ARE MANY?
This is exactly what a sequel to We Are Legion (We Are Bob) should be—the action picks up right where we left off, the stories continue to develop well and we get some good resolution, the stakes get raised, and the characters develop in ways that are natural yet unanticipated. The laughs are still there as is the tension—and maybe both are a little sharper. I love how all these Bobs are variations of each other, and yet come across as so distinctive (while Porter barely does anything different for almost all of them)—that's in the writing and the performing, and it's just great.

The last hour or so was the best writing and character work in the two books and made me eager for the next one.

This is great popcorn fun, and something tells me that I'm going to spend a lot of time with Mr. Taylor over the next few months (at least) (and hopefully more time with Mr. Porter, too). show less

I like this so much that I ran out of little flags for the pages.
Among the deltans, the natives on Delta Eridani that Bob adopts, is a large-sized warrior who is good at hunting. Since Bob names them, his sense of humor comes through loud and clear.
"Arnold was the other Prodigy in this new technology [spear-throwing]. He had an intuitive feel for anything that involved killing. A natural warrior, he'd been the first deltan to kill a gorilloid with a hand axe, splitting the beast's skull with one blow. Arnold was almost as big as a juvenile gorilloid, so he generally got very little back talk.
Arnold paced back and forth, helping individuals with their technique and yelling encouragement. I chuckled, without letting it play out through show more the drone. I'd rigged the translator to render his speech with an Austrian accent. It never got old."

The Bob's first encounter with the "Others":
"But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing. Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies -- literally all the animal life on the planet - then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?"

After Bob helps the delton's move back to a site that has a large Flint supply nearby, the hippogriffs start to attack in great number. Bob traces their nest to an Island close by. He drops a large Rock on the island, wiping out the hippogriffs. But it comes back to bite him in the ass (i actually misted up in this part):
"The council was having yet another session. Again, though, I wasn't expecting a medal.
When they were done, they motioned to the drone. I flew it over, and Hoffa stepped forward. 'We understand what you've done. We understand your explanations. But everything you ask, everything you do, seems to come with a larger and larger cost. We're not sure if we're better off now or not. There's a lot of argument about that.'
he paused for a moment, a determined look on his face, then faced me squarely. 'We'd like you to go away. We'll face our Fate ourselves. If you want to kill us, we can't stop you. If you want to kill me, I can't do anything about it. But you're not welcome here anymore.'
I stared at him, through the drone, for what seemed like forever. I was frozen. Numb. It was too much to process. The emotional circuit breaker had tripped. I'd lost a family already, now I was losing a second one."

VEHEMENT, The colony back on Earth who was against humankind, all for wiping out the whole species, had continued to sabotage food drops and blow up apartment buildings in different parts where enclaves lived. Riker begins to suspect that there's a spy in the system. It turns out it's Homer. He's been hacked.
"Homer booted up. His Avatar appeared in the common VR, looked surprised, then collapsed, screaming. The rest of us looked at each other in horror. Had I done something wrong? Had I damaged homer?
'homer, buddy, come back. You okay?' I knelt beside him and put my hand on his shoulder.
The screaming stopped, and he began to moan. He curled into a fetal position, squeezed his eyes shut, and rocked back and forth on the floor.
I was at a complete loss. Original Bob hadn't been much for this kind of emotional contact, and I was self-aware enough to know that I was even more standoffish than he was. Ralph and Charles didn't look any more prepared. However, Homer didn't seem to be getting worse or harming himself, so we decided in timeless male fashion to leave things be and wait for him to get a grip.
After a few more milliseconds, homer gasped and opened his eyes. 'I was hagridden. The bastards had total control of me. They made me lie to you; they made me blow things up. They made me kill people!'
Homer began to cry, a hopeless moaning alternating with racking sobs. 'I couldn't do anything. I could only watch myself follow their orders. I couldn't tell you. I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't even kill myself!' "

Jacques, on Delta Pavonis:
"I had implemented a plan to record as much of the planet as I could before the Others got here. Not just past civilization, either. Plants, animals, scenery, geology, anything and everything I could think of. I built a standalone set of stasis Chambers well in advance of the colony ships, and now I was slowly stocking it with genetic material from every species that I could get a needle into. A very informal and ad hoc genetic diversity vault, in essence. I had no overall organization, as I'd had no time to catalog and categorize the life on Delta Pavonis 4 into any kind of system. I was, in effect, stealing a strategy from Noah and treating everything as a 'kind'. The recordings would help with identifying species and such later. If there was a later.
I was also recording Pav societies, cultures, and languages. Between all the spying and recording, my data storage requirements were massive. Guppy had done the third upgrade since I started the project. I estimated there was at least one more upgrade coming.
I had played with the idea of contacting some Pav on the sly, perhaps to get a personal account of life. But Bill had convinced me that it would be cruel at best, and at worst, ghoulish.
Instead, I operated as a passive observer. Our technology was much better than the Victorian-era Pav scientists, but even so, things didn't always go perfectly. There'd been a couple of sightings, and Pav society now had their own version of conspiracy theorists and flying saucer nuts.
It made me wonder if the human equivalents had been based on some kind of reality. I tried to imagine some alien version of replicants hanging around Earth and kidnapping people. Especially with the anal probe thing. Just, no."

Archimedes, the young deltan that Bob had "discovered" and taken under his wing, so-to-speak, was very special to Bob. But when he grew to adulthood, and mated with "diana," Diana couldn't stand the drone that represented bob. Nevertheless, when Diana died, Bob in the form of his Android attended the funeral. I actually misted it up on this part too.
"I stood to one side as Archimedes hugged with Buster and his siblings, Rosa and pete [Archimedes'children]. Diana had died overnight. Peacefully, thank the universe. Delton's didn't cry as much, but their equivalent was just as heart-wrenching.
Diana was laid carefully into the grave, then Archimedes and his children each placed one white flower in her arms. As they stepped out of the way, the long line-up of descendants filed past and added more flowers.
Diana and Archimedes had done quite well with spreading their genes. When the lineup was finished, 31 flowers formed a large bouquet in her embrace. The family filled in the grave, then placed several large stone slabs over it to protect it from scavengers.
when it was done, everyone but Archimedes stepped back. He slowly sank to his knees, leaned forward, and hugged himself. Uttering a low keening, Archimedes rocked slowly back and forth."

Bill is able to rescue 20,000 of the pavs. He puts them in stasis, and when they are in the system of the planet that he has chosen for them, he wakes up eight of them:
"I described the Others to them, and explained their habit of raiding systems and killing off planets. A monitor on one wall displayed images of Others, the aftermath of Zeta Tucanae, and finally the destruction of Delta pavonis 4.
As the images of dead cities, oceans and forests flashed on the screen, the pav began to Keen. Sitting through that was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, but I had a moral obligation to stick with it.
It took a few hours, but we finally got through the whole story. The group seemed perplexed.
'You want us to decide? To return to Aszjan or settle a different world?'
'that is correct.'
The pac huddled and argued in low voices for several minutes.
Hazjiar, who seemed to have taken on the role of spokesperson, said, 'why?'
'because we don't know you well enough to know what would work best for you.'
'why not?'
'because we haven't been studying you for long enough.'
'Why not?'
Oh, holy... 'That's not important. We will make the decision if you don't want to, but we wanted to give you the option first.'
'and there are 20,000 of us? Why not more?'
'That's how many will fit into the two ships that we were able to build.'
'why?'
What're you, a 4-year-old? I would have to nip this in the bud, before I blew a transistor or something. 'Again, not important now. Are you willing and able to make that decision? If not, let us know and we'll take care of it.'

I can't wait to read the next book. After the Others told Bob's "siblings" that
their status had changed from "food" to "pest", they are a deadly threat. They've wiped out the pav's planet, and sometime soon they'll be heading to the Sol system.
I adore this author's sense of humor. show less

FOR WE ARE MANY (Bobiverse #2), in my opinion was even better than the first book and Ray Porter plays a large part in that.

For those who don't know, in the first book the first Bob had his head frozen and he was woken up many, many years later having had his consciousness installed in an AI. Since then, many things have happened, and Bob has created many clones of himself, as he was designed to do. His, (their), goal is to save humanity, (we are killing our planet and there are only about 15 million of us humans left), by finding or making proper environments to which we can be relocated. Which also involves providing food, finding a way for us to get to this new environment, and a way to protect us while on the way there. He, (they), show more also has to play referee to the factions of humanity that are left, because we never stop arguing amongst ourselves, do we?

While doing this, the Bobs, (the Rikers, Homers, Hals, Howards, Charlies and so forth), face numerous obstacles-the scariest of which is a Mandarin speaking species that the Bobs call THE OTHERS. If you are a Star Trek fan, the best way I can describe them is a combination of the Borg with Species 8472. To be blunt, they give no fucks about humanity or anything else, we are either a food or an enemy-neither of which is a good option for Bob/us.

I discovered this book blessed (?) some of the Bobs, (most especially Howard), with defined human feeling. Even though the Bobs are all clones of the original Bob and they have his memory, once they set off on their own, they develop their own personalities, and they get to name themselves. In Howard's case, that seems to include the development of feelings towards a few humans, and this portion of the story touched my heart so much, I can't even.

I have to say that the narrator here, Ray Porter, imbues the Bobs, Admiral Ackbar, Guppy, (who sounds like Sean Connery), Butterfield, and everyone with their own personalities and voices. I don't know how he does it without getting confused, but he does do it and he is SUBLIME. There's no other word I can think of to properly describe his performances in this book. In fact, I am SURE that I would not have enjoyed this volume as much as I did if I had read it instead of listening.

I am going to keep my Audible subscription even when it goes back up to full price because I have to get the next book and I need to listen to it on audio. Reading it will just not do.

Bravo to Dennis E. Taylor and to Ray Porter for bringing the Bobiverse alive- in all its snarky glory, humor, and love for humanity.

My highest recommendation! show less

I love reading great SF, but sometimes we just stumble across a novel or two that just make us beam with wonder and shared nerdiness and delight... and that basically describes these two Bob novels.

The scale is particularly delightful. You've gotta love a snarky nerd engineer-turned-AI distributed over 30 light years who's wondering what the hell the humans are doing. I mean, he's pretty well-adjusted, copying bits of himself into new iterations and letting them rename themselves as cultural nerd-pieces from the reader's culture.

But what's more, he's a pretty nice guy. He's doing everything in his ability to save stupid people and aliens and terraforming new worlds... while running up against an even bigger threat.

This second book can show more be seen as more of the same as the first book, but with one huge caveat. It's a character novel or (multi-character AND single-character) series. Confused? Don't be. It's all just Bob.

Of course, it looks like Bob has come up against something much bigger than him. And he's also considering a bit of a branching, I think. If he can't bring his crush along the immortality slide, then there's definitely other options opening up... :) A certain alien, perhaps? Humans are so untrustworthy with immortality... :)

Speculation. Just speculation. :)

Easily a series I'll always be chomping at the bit to get a copy of. :) show less

Even though I watched the action remotely via a floating observation drone, I could still feel my nether regions puckering up in fear. At times like this, I wondered if I hadn’t gone a little overboard with the level of detail in my virtual-reality environment. There was no reason for me to even have nether regions, let alone for them to pucker.

It remains wonderfully fascinating to see how the Bobs spread out and deal with all manner of problems throughout the universe, from a failing Earth, to fascinating alien worlds, to species both young to help and... otherwise. It's a crazy universe and [b:For We Are Many|33395557|For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)|Dennis E. show more Taylor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1501817361s/33395557.jpg|54144664] just takes the formula [b:We Are Legion (We Are Bob)|32109569|We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1)|Dennis E. Taylor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474344826s/32109569.jpg|52752877] established and runs with it.

The structure remains episodic, jumping from Bob to Bob, but it never took too long to get back to my favorite stories (and they're all interesting, just in different ways). It's fascinating how all of the Bobs feel at once distinct enough to each have their own personalities, while still sharing a core of the same character.

I think really the main negative I would say about For We Are Many is that it definitely suffers from second-of-a-trilogy syndrome. It dumps you in, really needing to have read the first and while some stories conclude, it doesn't quite end. But hey, [b:All These Worlds|35506021|All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3)|Dennis E. Taylor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498271736s/35506021.jpg|54144690] is out. Just go and read that for the (hopeful) thrilling conclusion!

Onwards! show less