[Book Review] ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson via SFSIGNAL
About three weeks before I started working for John DeNardo at SFSIgnal, I won a copy of Daniel H. Wilson‘s Robopocalypse. It took me a few weeks to get to reading it due to deadlines, conventions, and another book in my queue. In that time, Robopocalypse seemed to be everywhere. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this book. I’d just finished read a hard military SF novel and was (and am) looking forward to “lighter” reading. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of hard military SF. I’m also leery of books with blurbs like “Scary because it could happen” verbiage and hype. Robopocalypse is the exception. If you like “It could happen” thrillers, you’ll like this book. If you like military campaigns, you’ll like this book. If you like homicidal robots, you’ll like this book.
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Robopocalypse wasn’t at all what I was expecting. It’s written in sections – different parts of the Robot Uprising where a supercomputer called “Archos” develops consciousness and tries to take over the world. For a while, it succeeds by turning all the “smart” machines on the planet against humans. Humanity, though, doesn’t go easily or quietly. There are those who fight. Archos records everything, and when the war is over a human, Cormac Wallace, goes through one of the archives. That archive is the backbone of the entire book.
Each chapter is a “report” of an incident – recording and/or accounting with supporting evidence of the events that led up to the uprising, the events of the war that created key figures, the progression and ending of the war. Each report is a different element of the archive, told in 1st person, so the reader also gets different viewpoints of the war with commentary at the beginning and end of each “report” by Cormac Wallace.
At first glance, this type of structure would seem disjointed and hard to keep a narrative, but Wilson actually makes it work — and work well. There’s technical detail without getting bogged down in the detail. And you come to care about the characters. You want the humans to win. You want these people to be all right in the face of unthinkable odds.
It took me about two chapters to get into the book, then I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. And about a third of the way through the book, I found myself really wanting to apologize to my toaster – and praying my Cuisinart Grind’n’Brew didn’t try to kill me in my sleep. It’s a very compelling story. Between Battlestar Galactica and Robopocalypse I find myself really wanting to be nicer to my appliances. Well done, Daniel H. Wilson. Well done.