Length: 8 hours 58 mins

Narrator: Ray Porter

After listening to this book.. the 2nd instalment of the Bobiverse book series… I want to go back and listen to the 1st book.

The introduction of how Bob came to be where he is now is fantastic.

The basic premise… and it’s not so basic at that, is that Bob, was a living and breathing human in today’s time, he sells his business, about to enter some nice retirement and learn the things he wants to learn, on a whim signs up for his mind to me cryogenically preserved if he should die.  Which is ironic because he is very soon run over by a bus, but then wakes up 150 or so years later with his consciousness having been replicated into a computer.

Bob 2.0 thus comes back online.

But he comes back online in a time that humans are a war with each other, cryogenically frozen people have been declared to have no rights as the USA has become a Church state, and each major nation is in a race to build a von Neumann probe designed to save their version of humanity before all nations and therefore ideologies are destroyed.

The von Neumann probe in Bob’s case, is himself jacked into some pretty advanced technology and machinery.  He is tasked with looking for habitable planets to ensure human kind’s survival, gathering resources and self-replicating should it be needed for greater exploratory reasons, defense reasons, more resources gathering etc.

Bob is therefore self-replicating which when complete has a full copy of the previous version’s memory.  That being said, each Bob that comes online has slightly different personalities. And in order to avoid confusion go by different names, and choose to focus on different things. Which of course leads to some interesting story arcs.

From the author’s site, here’s a little ‘family tree’ of the Bobs created so far.

Bill for example was one of original Bob’s 1st spawns and is interested in technological development, and therefore sets up the ‘Skunkworks’ and is after a while able to produce Faster- than-light communication.  Nicknamed SCUT… for which I forgotten what it stands for.

Riker, another one of Bob’s 1st clones takes charge of going back to earth to rescue the rest of the Humans and begin transportation to other habitable worlds.

Things explored in the book

I think one thing that is very interesting is that the book explores the feasibility of von Neumann probes, and how it could be done. 3D printers for example being the most likely choice.

-The creation of Virtual Reality environments within a computer program, so Bob can maintain some of his humanity and meet with other ‘Bobs’. Including sandboxing function to check for viruses and ensure plans for future upgrades proceed correctly

– Being a sky God. –the possibility that a god is simply a more intelligent life-form that is able to observe and comprehend much more than the native inhabitants of the planet.

-Philosophical battle with the notion of immortality and what it means to be human, conscious and moral.

-Contact with an ethnocentric alien race, where peaceful cohabitation is out of the question.

-Future energy sources such as the Dyson sphere (opens in a new tab)

-Terraforming

-Seed and species accumulation for safe keeping

-planet transportation

Narration?

Ray Porter continues to do an excellent job. It’s just easy to listen to and he keeps the excitement alive when its needed. Which is exactly what you need for a book like this.
Plus, you can hear the emotion from the different versions of bob, which of course adds a bit of depth.

Listen-ability?

Sure… let’s assume that’s a word.  The fact that you already know what it means… means it may as well be a word.

From the excitement that I wrote with about the book, you may be able to tell that I thought it was pretty difficult to NOT listen to it.

I listened to it at every opportunity  got… in fact, I was midway through a different book (Ex Heroes) and ended up listening to a bit of this, and then couldn’t put it down.

This is an amazing continuation of the series.

I love the addition of another potential threat.
Love that Bob’s role has become one of protection for not just the human race but for all species.
The development of this character and his knowing on what is the moral thing to do despite coming up against others with varying viewpoints and mal-intentions is nice to see.
I love the fact that this book is 80% exploration and development of new technologies etc, and 20% overcoming the standard kind of enemy.
I love that kind of story.

And I really like that the total mass of explored universe that Bob has made is referred to as the Bobiverse.  Just like the SCUT communications, sharing of knowledge, blogs etc is collectively known as Bob-net.  Lovely little touches.
I was surprised to find myself already on the last chapter so early.. would have loved it to just keep going.
Again, eagerly awaiting the 3rd instalment.

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