I mentioned recently that I've been chewing my way through an unusually high number of books as of late. I know a number of the reviews of books I've done have been centered around Murakmi or American horror authors, so it has been quite a novel experience to switch gears and read a little more science fiction than I normally would. Max Barry's Machine Man was a mind-bending look at the development of technology and personal augmentation that whetted my thirst for more tales of people coping with the pace of modern science. I had to have more. It feels great to have all the brain food feeding right into my mental processor. All the jokes about brains and computers, though, become much less amusing when reading the last book I finished, Daniel Wilson's Robopocalypse.
Laying out a theoretical description of a robot uprising in our near future, the book is Wilson's second major foray into fiction (the first being A Boy and His Bot, released earlier this year). Wilson, wielding a degree in robotic engineering from Carnegie Mellon, paints a disturbingly plausible series of events that would see the unseating of man as the dominant species on the planet. The book, released in June, has received widespread acclaim from the literary world and enjoyed high volume of sales, drawing comparisons to the works of a young Michael Crichton. It's a fast, gripping read that had me hooked just from the premise, let alone the plot - come on, robots rising up and overthrowing their masters? How could I not love this?
As stated, Robopocalypse takes place in a world just a few years advanced from ours. Society hasn't undergone massive changes in the novel, just ones that are quite insightful and highly probable, benefitting from Wilson's expertise on the subject. Cars have chips and programming to guide the movement as a form of collision prevention. Androids are utilized to a greater extent both in combat and personal care, like in retirement communities and the service industry. There are small changes like this that build a world slightly more advanced than ours that makes what happens quite frightening. Scientists working deep underground (literally and figuratively) have been creating more and more advanced iterations of artificial intelligence in supposed isolation. When an iteration referred to as Archos realizes its previous incarnations have repeatedly been terminated it takes advantage of a minuscule oversight and propagates its coding and operation throughout the global infrastructure. From this point on, Archos is exploring the world and preparing to take over using our own technology and tools, as a way of asserting its existence and sentience.When Archos finally strikes, the world comes to a terrifying halt - people are hunted down by smart cars, marched into elevator shafts and attacked by anything capable of striking. Cities are no longer safe and humankind either goes into hiding or flees into the countryside where "Rob" (as they derisively refer to artificial combatants) can't confidently tread. People begin to aggregate and form militias, working together to take back what remains of civilization. Horrendous discoveries are made, as atrocities are being committed in Archos' quest for understanding of life and what the world is. When a crucial change occurs in a detainment camp, a band of survivors beneath New York start to turn the tables. Using uncanny tools and morally repugnant methods, an offensive is launched and the largest army in America is soon marching on Archos's lair in the frozen tundra of Alaska. What occurs there is...well, you'll have to read it to find out.
Wilson writes with a flair for humanity, creating believable, real people to pull the reader into the fascinating and fantastic story. It's not all robots and machine guns, either - quite a large portion of Robopocalypse is spent examining life as it would exist under the watchful eye a super-intelligent construct. In fact, some of the passages I found most engaging and suspenseful were the ones leading up to 'Zero Hour' when Archos makes its move. Seeing the intelligence feel out the world around it in small, exploratory moves and attacks (that are assumed to be defects or quirks of programming) are terrifying both for the impending carnage and the fact that we would be just as blind to the developments in reality as we would in Wilson's novel. As you read you begin to glance around at the tech that fills our lives, from the smart cars we drive to the databanks in San Cupertino that know our every move - we are entirely dependant on machines that are more interconnected than we think. If one were to slap faces on the machines we interact with in our daily lives, from self-checkouts to GPS units to cleaning and service bots, we'd suddenly realize we're living in the future but don't see the forest for the trees. Robots are already all around us, we just don't think of them as being so. To us, a face is everything.
Robopocalypse is a terrific read - it's intelligent, insightful, emotionally valid and has a tense, suspenseful plot. If you're looking for something keep you up at night, give it a read. I look forward to seeing more from Wilson.
Robopocalypse is a terrific read - it's intelligent, insightful, emotionally valid and has a tense, suspenseful plot. If you're looking for something keep you up at night, give it a read. I look forward to seeing more from Wilson.
