We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
The Bobiverse series, Volume 1
Dennis E. Taylor
Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: When Robert Johansson's software company hit it big, the first thing he did was secure his own future with a visit to CryoEterna, a cryogenics company... though a man in his thirties surely has plenty of time before worrying about death.
He doesn't make it through the next weekend.
Revived over a hundred years in the future, Bob is now at the mercy of a theocracy that took over America and determined "corpsicles" like himself to be nonhuman; his assets were stripped, his mind uploaded into a computer, and failure to cooperate with his new masters means immediate termination. Nor are they the only threat to his existence, as factions within the theocracy and external saboteurs continually threaten the project he's supposed to be part of: a self-replicating deep-space probe meant to scout for habitable planets. There may even be other AI-manned probes already out there, launched by rival nations, none of which will be friendly to him or his mission. Plus the sheer stress of being reduced to a computer AI has driven more than one revived person insane, not helped by the possibility that his new masters may have manipulated his new "brain" in ways he doesn't know.
For a lifelong science fiction fan and all-around computer nerd, it's both the dream of a lifetime and a nightmare. To survive, Bob will need all his wits about him... or, at the very least, a few more Bobs.

REVIEW: With a throwback feel, We Are Legion (We Are Bob) evokes both a sense of fun and a sense of wonder. Bob's deep-space adventures are grounded in science, but even a lay fan like myself could follow along easily enough. It moves fairly well, even before it splits to follow copy-Bobs (each with a variant personality and new name) through multiple adventures, from dodging rival AI probes to exploring new planets and alien life-forms to salvaging what's left of Earth's population after the seemingly-inevitable planet-killing nuclear war. If I have any complaint, it's that the ending feels a bit incomplete, as though the book was never intended to be its own arc; there are at least two more Bobiverse books out, so that may be the case. Overall, though, it's a well-paced and enjoyable read, particularly for fans of science fiction and space exploration.

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