Length: 9 hours 30 mins
This is an incredible book, I can’t recommend highly enough!
What would you do if you were immortal, had the processing power of a computer, could link into other computers, control robots, build whatever you want and had a space ship that could go anywhere?
This is Bob.
Bob has a mission, he is meant to be looking for habitable planets to ensure human kind’s survival, rather than suffer extinction from their own hands.
Bob was also…formerly human.
The summary for the book on audible.com doesn’t do it justice, it is intriguing for sure…but doesn’t do it justice.
This is an absolutely incredible book, and I would recommend it to all lovers of Sci-fi.
Until this book I had never heard of a ‘von neumann probe’. (link opens in a new tab)
It’s a fantastic concept, a self-replicating sentient spacecraft.
This book explores it perfectly.
This is one of those books that starts with a fantastic concept and just expands on it more and more, there’s so much adventure to be had… it reminds me much of ‘Off to be the Wizard’ by Scott Myers in that way.
It shows that to create amazing books you don’t just have to stick to ‘the hero’s tale formula, it can just be an incredible concept followed by exploration of that concept. It’s strange to know just how many writers stick to that ‘hero’s tale’ formula (opens in a new tab), and although it usually makes for a quick paced story, it get also get tiresome after you listen to things like that for too long.
Off to be the Wizard, and We are Legion (We are Bob) break that mould and explore story-telling in a different direction.
The story keeps reverting back to panels of people in our time talking about what they think would be possible and what wouldn’t be and then shows what has been achieved in the time of the book.
It’s really interesting.
Plus, seeing the interactions of humans, and the pettiness that still exists even more than 100 years into the future. And this sentient spaceship which was originally built by them having to interact with them to try and save the human race… i think these interactions are quite fascinating.
It makes you think as well, explore new concepts which could have been the start of humanity… makes you ask those ‘what if..?’ questions which are really interesting to explore.
I really can’t recommend this book highly enough.
On further background reading it turns out that those black rectangles in ‘2001 a space odyssey’ were meant to be von neumann probes that urged on the development of humanity… but for some reason they chose not to put that in or explain that. (which would have made a lot more sense)
The fact that this book does explain this, and then explores everything that could potentially come after this…is just fantastic.
My favourite moment from the story?
I guess where Bob, original bob realises he can pass of his work to the other Bobs he has created and he settles down for a project fro which he most wants to do.. which in this case is being the guiding force for another sentient race in the hopes that humans might be able to interact with them in the future.
The technological progresses that Bob makes is really interesting, Faster-than-light travel, virtual reality instantaneous telecommunications…all really great, and infinite time to work on such projects. You can see where the story is going, or at least it is just constantly expanding the horizons of possibilities.
All of it is fantastic!
This is one of those kind of books where you could just sit down and listen to it in 1 sitting, however at the same time, it’s so good that you want to savour it as well… so you actually want to break it up into little segments.
I’m eagerly awaiting the next instalments. This is an author I will be keeping an eye on.
To listen to a sample, read the summary or potentially buy the book:
To read my review on audible:
http://www.audible.com/listener/AQ8GDB9XPEP4I?ref_=a_lib_mst_tnaft_5
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Happy listening!
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