Robopocalypse (Robopocalypse, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Jul 29, 2011 Morgan rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi

Story:

This is a story about what happened when the all the machines of man became “aware” and fell under the control of a master AI that called itself the Archon. The story follows several different people that the machines followed throughout the war and stored their exploits in an archive that was labeled “Heroes”. This archive spans the length of the conflict from the first few incidents to the rise of the robots to the final battle in Alaska. Some of the people followed are everyday people t ...more

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May 15, 2011 Sarah Sammis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, scifi, exwishlist, read-in-2012, audio

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 no ...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Kimberly rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

Robopocalypse was the book I chose this to read this year for Banned Books Week. This novel was assigned to a STEM-based class at the Hardin Academy in Tennessee, and a parent requested it be removed from the curriculum for language. Now I don't use much profanity myself, and I can appreciate how the issue of language came up; the mother was reading the novel aloud with her son and asking him questions, which I think is an encouraging sign of parental involvement in a kid's education. I do think Robopocalypse was the book I chose this to read this year for Banned Books Week. This novel was assigned to a STEM-based class at the Hardin Academy in Tennessee, and a parent requested it be removed from the curriculum for language. Now I don't use much profanity myself, and I can appreciate how the issue of language came up; the mother was reading the novel aloud with her son and asking him questions, which I think is an encouraging sign of parental involvement in a kid's education. I do think parents should take an active interest in what their kids are reading, for school or not. BUT . . .

. . . this book was set during a Robot takeover. Malfunctioning machines, people being killed in the streets . . . I don't there's anyone who'd be saying "Aww, shucks!" under those circumstances. Many of the characters were also likely to use profanity a great deal in daily life, because they were military or punk-kid hacker types, or just because they were under a great deal of stress. There was no sex in the novel, and the violence wasn't graphic (and alarmist types tend to worry less about that anyway), and many students encounter worse language that this every day. For the parent concerned about his child's language, it could have started an intelligent conversation about why.

I'm never going to side with anyone who's pro-censorship no matter what, but picking on the book made this challenging parent even more alarmist and petty than most.

Which has no bearing, however, on how good the book is, or how much I liked it. This is one of those cases in which I don't necessarily think those are the same thing. When I was reading the back cover of Robopocalypse, I kept looking at the author blurbs and going "Oh, Clive Cussler. I've never read him." "Robert Crais---doesn't he write thrillers?" (I avoid "thrillers" because I get to decide whether or not a book thrills me, not its genre). "Compared to early Crichton---never read him either." It may very well be inaccurate, but whenever I see a book that's called a thriller, whether it's a science fiction thriller, espionage, or suspense, I get the impression that I may be in for a very exciting ride, plot-wise, but the characters may get short shrift. And while I love an exciting plot, character is what I tend to read for, and if I have to choose one or the other, the latter is what I'll go for.

Which isn't to say that the characters in Robopocalypse weren't interesting; in fact, many of them were, which is why I wanted more about them. There were these tidbits dropped, and I wanted to know more about them. Wilson introduces a group of characters who live in a world very similar to our own, but with widespread artificial intelligence. And . . . things begin to go wrong. A baby doll making threats. A domestic robot attacking two fast food workers. A hacker receiving automated calls from other people's phones . . . The beginning section intrigued me a great deal, the initial hints of eerie wrongness just before everything goes to hell and the robots, led by an artificial intelligence named Archos, mount a coordinated attack against the humans. It was a scary reminder how much we depend on these days.

In order to make it clear that, when the robots go haywire, people are affected everywhere, from the technician Takeo Nomura in Japan to the Alaskan miner Dwight Bowie, to the serviceman Paul Blanton in Afghanistan, Wilson presents us with a large cast of characters, possibly too many for the length of the novel (about 350 pages). It's also necessary to bring home the message of the novel, that the humans succeed against the robots when they work together, even if they would otherwise be enemies. For instance, there's the American soldier and the Afghan insurgent who join forces against the machines. . . . which are starkly contrasted with the military base in Albany that begins shooting human civilians trying to enter. Most of the time, since the novel is set in wartime, the characters are pretty single-minded, focused on just surviving, which I think also makes it harder to bring them to life as distinct personalities. You get an impression of how they act during a crisis, and that is the most important thing during the present circumstances, but it doesn't encompass someone's entire personality. The example I will take is Takeo Nomura. He is a Japanese technician who has a robotic lovedoll, Mikiko. This wouldn't interest me much, except a. Mikiko appears to be the same age as Nomura, 60ish or so, and b. he says he loves her. When Mikiko is infected by a virus and attacks him, he is heartbroken as well as physically wounded; when the robots have attacked, Nomura's work with Mikiko and other robots allows him to play a pivotal role in turning the tide. But what I wanted to know was this; why does Mikiko exist? Why did Nomura make her or have her made to look as she did? The narrator certainly was impressed by him, but I wanted to know more.

I have read that Robopocalypse is being made into a film, and I think it might work well as one, particularly one of those summer blockbusters jammed full of characters and special effects, like Independence Day. I'd probably like it better as a film, though I'd still really like to see the characters more developed. It was an exciting story, and I'd read more from the author because I think he probably will develop and produce more sophisticated characterization in later work. It's just that for my personal tastes, there were too many characters who were interesting but not fully fleshed out. ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Schnaucl rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, science-fiction, fiction, post-apocalyptic, august, read_2011

Four and a half stars.

I've seen this described as World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War but with robots. I can see why people make the comparison. The narrative structure is similar, although not exactly the same.

World War Z has stories from all over the world whereas Robopocalypse takes place almost entirely in the United States except for a few chapters in Afghanistan.

World War Z has oral interviews but Robopocalypse has bits of fiction sandwiched between introduction and follow up ...more

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Jun 22, 2014 Tom rated it really liked it

I guess I was on a robot kick on a recent vacation. I read this and (book: Machine Man) on Kindle.

I enjoyed this apocalypse/singularity event novel. It's written in the (book: World War Z) style, in which different journal entries or story tellers all convey the plot. In this book, the tales blend together more snugly, with the explanation being that these stories are all be retold by a single author... who is compiling them from a memory storage robot device found after the end of the war.

The ...more

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May 29, 2013 Cindywho rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy-sf

It's likeWorld War Z - but with Robots! I liked the depiction of how robots will operate in the near future, but was less convinced by the evil AI. It was a little more violent than I was in the mood for, but that's what I get for reading something with "pocalypse" in the title. ...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, post-apocalyptic

This book is set up similar to World War Z. It's an overview of the war between humans and robots, as told through glimpses of the action of human heroes before and during the fighting.

I found it creepier than WWZ because I don't think the dead will rise from their graves whereas the idea that a computer will figure out that the world would be better off without humans isn't far fetched.

I'm rounding up my rating because this book should probably only get 3.5 stars. The beginning was really good ...more

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