We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is my current audiobook, and I thought I'd review it while I'm halfway into it.  My reasons are twofold: first, while I'm finished with 80% of the books I read when I actually write out my reviews, some books I review as I'm reading them; and second, I've gotten out of the habit of reviewing the novels I read because I usually read audiobooks, and once one ends, another begins.  I originally named this blog "Elmenreich Books," not "Elmenreich Comics," which it has become.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) won an Audible Award for "Best Science Fiction Novel."  I downloaded it on my now-defunct Amazon Unlimited account and paid an extra $2 or $3 for the audiobook version of the novel, which survived me quitting Amazon Unlimited.  It's about nine-and-a-half hours long, and it's based on the concept of a von Neumann probe.  The idea of self-replicating probes have been around in hard sci-fi since the original draft of 2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.  The scene never made it into the 1969 movie or the novel based on the movie.  Charles Sheffield published Cold as Ice in 1992, and it specifically mentions "von Neumann machines," which are self-replicating probes that are designed to populate the galaxy following a natural or human-made catastrophe on Earth.

Dennis E. Taylor takes the idea and runs with it, adding in a main character, Bob, who has his head frozen after dying in a car accident outside a science-fiction convention in the present day.  The fact that he dies just after attending a panel about von Neumann probes involves a suspension of disbelief, but it works fine as a framing device.  By a strange coincidence, I had just finished reading Zero K by Don DeLillo, also published in 2016 and also based on a wealthy character getting his head frozen.  The two novels are nothing similar, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone familiar with Don DeLillo's turgid yet beautiful prose and his use of the absurd.

Bob is woken up 117 years after his death to learn that his body and brain have been destroyed.  He is merely a computer simulation based on the brain chemistry of his body, which became state property in 2042.  He also copies his programming to find out that the copies have entirely different personalities of their own.  A mix of hard sci-fi, political sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi continues; a sequel is forthcoming later this month, which I will most assuredly buy.  This is going to be a great series.