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(as of Oct 13, 2024 09:55:39 UTC – Details)
There’s a reason We Are Legion (We Are Bob) was named Audible’s Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself. Bob and his clones are on a mission to find new homes for humanity and boldly go where no Bob has gone before.
Dennis E. Taylor’s hilarious novel sets the stage for the magnificent performance of Ray Porter, who revels in the brave new world of corpsicles, artificial intelligence, interstellar space probes, and space colonization in tantalizing detail.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is the first installment in the blockbuster Audible Original Bobiverse series – which has sold more than one million copies.
4.5
Reviewer: Jake Breckner
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Awesome job, Bob!!!
Review: The Bobiverse’s first book was a thrilling, imaginative journey filled with humor, exploration, AI insights, and unexpected challenges. Engrossing read!
Reviewer: AustinTiffany
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent Concept, Good Start, Slow Story Progression
Review: Short Review: starts out strong and pulls you in with succinct but intelligent narrative style and the right amount of dry humor. The concept is solid and well-thought out, but once the story passes the “jumping off” point, things greatly slow down and largely become procedural or cerebral in nature. Coupled with confusing time-scale progression and the characters all being bodiless, you might find your interest waning by the end.Longer Review: I get the distinct impression that the idea for this story sprung initially from a short-story concept the author might have spun up, and then, after some urging or further thought, he decided to try and spin it out to a full length novel. Mechanically, the first quarter of this book or so would form a pretty solid short story in terms of pace, concept, and a point where it could have clearly been ended. This is reinforced by the fact that AFTER this “ending” the story greatly slows down and becomes almost entirely procedural in nature, and, to the reader, almost entirely cerebral, in that none of the characters have flesh and blood bodies, and nearly all the events take place in space.This doesn’t make the rest of the novel, BAD, per se, but it does significantly shift the narrative style and story progression. What initially pulls you into this book largely dries up at this point. By and large, the bulk of this novel is narrated by the same character, or virtual clones of this character, and the story is told in the first person. After the jumping-off point, where the narrator character heads off into space, events sometimes read like a narration of a space-based RTS game. To be sure, the initial concept, and the concepts involved after the jumping-off point, are good, but tend to be a bit stale for a chapter-by-chapter novel.From a technical perspective, the author handles most things pretty well, especially in the beginning. He does a good job setting up the concept, the basis for the plot, and several other ideas. But once the narrator character is on his own, he starts to hand-wave over a lot of stuff. This is especially ironic given that the narrator makes several references to a gripe about how sci-fi authors of his day hand-waved over several space travel concepts. While there’s obvious advantages involved with a loner computer engineer being turned into an AI with super-advanced processing capabilities and no need to sleep, eat, or drink, the author brushes over the fact that a lot of scientific research is developed through collaboration and / or chance or trial and error.Overall, this is an intelligent and well written original story idea. The listing for this novel calls this “Book 1”, so it’s pretty clear the author probably intends to write sequels some day. But this story stands pretty well on its own and thankfully does not end on any kind of a cliff-hanger. That said, there are at least 3 or 4 story elements left open to continuation in a sequel that I would like to see.
Reviewer: rockymtnhigh
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Scalzi has competition. Enter the Bobiverse, you won’t regret it.
Review: Let’s talk science fiction. I have read science fiction since I was a kid, and while I will admit, I am picky, and it takes a good author to draw me into a new “universe,” I definitely have favorites. For about a decade I was all over the Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game series, and I still admit to re-reading the original trilogy regularly. But then Uncle Orson got way too political in his novels (not in a Red or Blue way, but just boring stories focused on political drama, instead of good story-telling. Because seriously, no one really cared about Peter the Hegemon. Blah…Then I discovered John Scalzi and his Old Man’s War series. Scalzi is probably the most well-regarded author in the contemporary sci-fi world. His stories are engaging, he has a sense of humor (often dry, but very funny) and he pokes fun at our contemporary culture through a sci-fi lens. That said, his most recent book, The Collapsing Empire, fell short for me, suffering a bit too much of the Card syndrome. But I’ll forgive him – anyone who writes a book called Red Shirts is a winner in my book.In the last year I’ve gone back to the old Robert Heinlein “Juveniles” (juvenile my ass, this is good classic science fiction), and have enjoyed old favorites. It has been fun to re-discover Citizen of the Galaxy and a few others, like Time for the Stars, and Farmer in the Sky. Heck, I think Citizen of the Galaxy was my first science fiction novel, oh, 40 years ago. It never gets old.Two week’s ago Audible/Amazon sent me a marketing email. If you liked Andy Weir’s “The Martian” (who didn’t?) you will love Dennis Taylor’s We are Legion (We are Bob). I took a look. And to be honest, the only similarity to Weir’s book is the author’s great sense of humor (and you could imagine Bob and Mark Watney getting along fine, filled with snark). I downloaded the audible version and found a great new author.Taylor is Scalzi-esque in the best sense. The short version is that the protagonist is a science nerd who decides to invest in his “future” by paying for having his eventual corpse (well, actually his brain and head) to be cyrogenically-frozen upon his death, to be brought back when science was capable of such feats. Little did Bob know that he’s get run down by a car that same day. And then we jump forward 150 years to a post-US theocracy, where Bob has been brought back as an artificial intelligence, to be re-purposed as a “Von Neumann probe,” powering a space ship hat will travel to other worlds, with futuristic 3D printers capable of reproducing anything, including Bob’s ship, and “replicating” more Bobs. Yeah, sounds strange. BUT read it, and within a couple chapters you will totally get it. Each Bob has all of the prior’s memories, but is somewhat different. Each Bob takes a different name, and has slightly different personalities. There is Bob, there is Bill, there is Riker (yes, Bob is a serious trekkie, and so is the author, score one for him). There is Homer (Simpson,not the Ancient Greek), there is Bender (Breakfast Club anyone?). And on and on.The novel is fast-paced; the writing is excellent, Scalzi now has some serious competition. I won’t go any further, as I don’t want to spoil the book, but I am now in the second book, We are Many, which literally continues where the first one takes off.And if you are into audiobooks, this is a winner. Ray Porter is one of the best new voices in audible studios. Just excellent narration. Similar to Wil Wheaton’s work, and just fun to listen to. Give the Bobiverse a read.
Reviewer: James Lee
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Wild and fun
Review: Loved this book a lot! It has a fresh take on story telling and character development is a wild one with how their all off the same guy! It has some really funny and disturbing parts especially beginning but what a ride so far.
Reviewer: Amanda d’Adesky
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fun read.
Review: A good blend of science and fiction with a pragmatic approach to how we can reach the stars. Entertaining characters, interesting perspectives, and just an overall fun read.
Reviewer: MJ Maddox
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An Awesome and Unqie story
Review: I picked up this book based on a suggestion from someone on Facebook and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It starts off a little slow, but picks up the pace after a few chapters. Once Bob starts making several copies of himself, multiple stories start occurring simultaneously. It leads to a very interesting story that Iâm hoping to continue to follow.
Reviewer: Roberto
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Eu gostei bastante. Taylor desenvolve bem a história, e os Bobs são personagens deliciosos. O crescimento da IA deixou o texto um pouco datado, mas mesmo assim a história é bastante crÃvel, e a última página lida sempre deixa um gosto de quero mais. Continuarei lendo a série.
Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Interesting, and imaginative story line. I love that the main character(s) are so good at creative problem solving (in the manner of Andy Weir’s books) where the overcome all manner of difficulties through cleverness and cunning.
Reviewer: Amazon Kunde
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I as looking for something similar to Weir’s “Hail Mary” and this one is a 10/10 for me.
Reviewer: Richard Sahlin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Bought the book on a whim and did not expect much- boy was I in for a ride.Well written, humerous and a great story – think Heinlein or Asimov BUT with a big dose of humor thrown in!
Reviewer: I. Fagin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: An easy but very enjoyable read. Iâm looking forward to reading they next one. Read it if you need something to get you through the dark times.
