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What happens when a two-billion-dollar weapon goes AWOL? Weapon is the story of Solo, a robot created as the ultimate killing machine. There's just one problem-the weapon reuses to kill on command. At 6'2" and 300 pounds of titanium and electronic circuits, Solo is the latest in weapon technology and artificial intelligence. Equipped with telescopic, microscopic and infrared vision, the strength of thirty men and reflexes beyond those of any Olympic athlete, Solo also has a brain. Bill show more Stewart, the gawky co-owner of Electron Dynamics, has created the thing most computer engineers only dream of: a machine that can learn. Sent on a trial in Costa Rica with Bill and flag-waving, leather-assed General Clyde Haynes, Solo monitors a Pentagon transmission ordering him shipped back to Florida for reprogramming. In a spectacular helicopter chase beneath the jungle canopy, Solo crashes his chopper, crawls out of the wreckage and, as his batteries begin to run out, escapes across the border into Nicaragua. There he's discovered by a band of campesinos who hook him up to their portable generator and recharge him. The robot brings Yanqui ingenuity to the tiny village of Las Cruzas and, in return, learns about friendship. He discovers he'd rather study the mythic rituals of Los Indios than war, but he knows he's being tracked by an elite CIA death squad. This highly trained team of ruthless men is determined to retrieve one of our most expensive pieces of weaponry at any cost, even if it means annihilating the village and all its inhabitants. Meanwhile, Las Cruzas is also under siege in the civil war that continues to rage in Nicaragua. A Contra brigade attacks the town-and meets a shocking defense. Robert Mason, author of the New York Times bestselling Vietnam War memoir, Chickenhawk, enters entirely new territory in a smashing fiction debut. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
My reaction to reading this novel in 1997. Spoilers may follow.
This book probably wasn’t appreciated as much as it could be in the wake of James Cameron’s Terminator films which also deal with sentient, humanoid weapon systems. (Cybernetic weapons are nothing new in sf. They go back to at least Murray Leinster’s “The Warbler”. But they are often not humanoid nor is there interior life explored much.)
Mason does a very credible job of describing the technology and software that goes into Solo and his tale of Solo going rogue – as predicted by his creator who ultimately chooses to conceal Solo’s survival at novel’s end – is credible. I found Mason’s ability to draw Solo’s character from just a few spoken lines show more remarkable. show less
This book probably wasn’t appreciated as much as it could be in the wake of James Cameron’s Terminator films which also deal with sentient, humanoid weapon systems. (Cybernetic weapons are nothing new in sf. They go back to at least Murray Leinster’s “The Warbler”. But they are often not humanoid nor is there interior life explored much.)
Mason does a very credible job of describing the technology and software that goes into Solo and his tale of Solo going rogue – as predicted by his creator who ultimately chooses to conceal Solo’s survival at novel’s end – is credible. I found Mason’s ability to draw Solo’s character from just a few spoken lines show more remarkable. show less
Pretty good. Creating a war machine that thinks can backfire. course that might be a good thing.
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Best Military Science Fiction
57 works; 26 members
Author Information
5 Works 1,377 Members
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Weapon
- People/Characters
- Eusebio; Solo
- Important places
- Costa Rica; Nicaragua
- Dedication
- To Patience
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Grinning like a fool, Bill swept the footprints away.
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- Members
- 119
- Popularity
- 272,927
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.08)
- Languages
- English, Hungarian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 3
