Thursday, July 28, 2011

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Image Taken from io9
Disclaimer: I received Robopocalypse as an advanced review copy. 


I didn't really enjoy Robopocalypse, which is strange. The truly terrible title aside, the book is honestly a well-crafted tale of a robot uprising. I suppose that, at the moment, I simply don't care about robot uprisings very much - I just find my own life more interesting. So, it took me awhile to read the book.

An initial hurdle for me in reading this book is that it is written in first-person present-tense, a narrative format I have great difficulty getting into. I'm not entirely sure why the author chose this format, as the story is actually being told after the events, but he does it well and eventually I was able to get into the flow of it. 

The actual story itself is driven mostly by a couple of big ideas, twists on the typical robot uprising story. I won't spoil them for you, though there's one at the beginning I wish the author had spent more time on. The book is also largely built upon a theme - humans triumph through adversity. It's not a new idea, but it receives a pretty good treatment at the hands of Daniel Wilson. Unfortunately, the general picture he paints is a very utilitarian one. 

All in all, I'd recommend this book only to people interested in the subject matter. It is well written, and there's plenty of action and drama, but if you're not concerned with how humanity might handle near-genocide at the hands of sentient machines, well... I'd give it a pass.