Bobiverse, the book series

2020-01-23 ◦ 4 Minute read

This is a port of an old blog article from a previous website of mine. It does not reflect how I am now, but is ported for completeness sake. Regardless, I have done my best to port it to this website as it was originally intended, which was difficult as I used to write these articles as JSON with html encoding. Yes, I used to preview and edit posts that way.

Bobiverse. What a great name. You see, Bobiverse is a book series written by a guy named 'Dennis E. Taylor'. He's a Canadian Author, and writes hard science fiction. To be perfectly honest, it feels a bit dis-honest to talk about his books without talking about him more, but sadly and rather rudely i have nothing else to say about him and will move on.

Where was i? oh yes, Bobiverse. Bobiverse is a Trilogy of books set in the future. After selling his software company, Bob Johansson expects a nice luxury life. Unfortunately, things don't go to plan, and he wakes up 127 years in the future, learning that he's now property of the state, as an aritificial intelligence with the purpose of manning a garbage truck or something. It's an incredibly good read, which is why i'm so hesitant to talk deeply about it, as i don't want to spoil the effect. I came accross the series as my online alias is 'Bob', and a friend made the connection. Considering the type of media i enjoy, it was rather suprising to find this book wasn't even something i had heard of. ...I suppose i'll stop pussy-footing around it, and just whip out a huge 'Spoiler Warning! Books I & II' for the rest of the article.

Book I: WE ARE LEGION (WE ARE BOB)

This is the first book in the series, which does the following; It introduces our character, Bob Johansson, who i thought was called Robert for a short time. It introduces the universe our character finds himself in, an utter dystopian, where religion was merged into the state by some congressman who ruined the world and its progress. It also does things that i won't be able to pickup on, as i can't analyze books very well. I'll just sort of give my views then, and point out things i liked. My favourite part has to be when he first clones himself. That utter moment of 'Hang on, something's not right...' and then BAM, it's not him. I love it. Medeiros' fight was great aswell.

Book II: FOR WE ARE MANY

This one i'm not done reading as of writing, and it's even more enjoyable than the first. The bobs have certainly come to terms with their existence, and have been making technological strides. FTL Communications, Androids, 15g acceleration, the whole lot. A pure ol' star-trek. The Deltans, a Threat in the form of The Others, and migrating humans. All of these things come along to make one of the best books i've read in a while. (although i don't read alot of books.) In this one, my two favourite parts (it's so good on a background level i can't have one!) are:

The Deltan Android. It made me feel alot of emotions that i can't quite describe.
The Others' battle. Is there much to say? it blows Medeiros out of the water by orders of magnitude!

This book is really well written in my opinion, and i certainly can feel the text. I felt bob's anguish when he was thrust away from the Deltans by the Council, and very much wanted the story to go a different way. The Others are just dicks.

Book III: ALL THESE WORLDS

I haven't read this far enough to comment, yet.

That's the spoiler warning off now, though i doubt people have continued to read. All in all, these books in my opinion are a great read. This blog is starting to feel redundant as i go along, as it feels i'm grasping for things to write about. So i'll write about what i don't like about the book.

A Majority of things i don't like about the book is just me being a picky prick. But they are quite valid, never-the-less. These also contain spoilers so uh... ignore the turned off spoiler warning.

Why don't the Bobs ever upgrade their CPU? If they can't framejack high enough, why don't they just make better units that can?
How the hell does the FTL Communications work? I'm pretty sure in the book they're waived away as Quantum magic, but that's an easy way out.
In book III, they manage to make a fully realistic android of both A) A human, and B) A Deltan. How?! Time is not magic!
It seems that despite how worried about the others the bobs are, they don't appear to actively be doing anything. I'm not sure if i'm being a tit or it's an actual issue.

Never-the-less these are great books, and as i explained earlier, this is just me being a pessimistic asshole.

Happy Sci-fi! -Bob (Human, not a space ship yet.)