![]() and that basically describes these two Bob novels. I love reading great SF, but sometimes we just stumble across a novel or two that just make us beam with wonder and shared nerdiness and delight. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: How naughty, but as long as it´s safe, sane, and consensual, who am I to judge. Although they are more of an easygoing side plot without as many philosophical and societal questions, in contrast to how relationships will evolve as soon as mind uploading runs smoothly and any kind of body, gender, or animal can be chosen to mate with. This aspect will be examined in more detail in the third part of the series and has some unique thoughts that are the most outstanding elements of the series besides the many multiple mini me with evolving personalities, the consequences of digital immortality on society in general, and the ethical aspect of uplifting. And don´t forget the nasty, conservative, intolerant relatives. Real humans and love are already complicated enough, but as soon as androids, AIs, or copies of real humans get involved, it gets even more hard(ware)core or soft(ware)core, depending on the personal preferences. ![]() ![]() Because there are many collective hive minds or evil insect queens controlling all of its minions, optional with some officers and generals with more activated brainpower in between or bred less degenerate than the worthless cannon fodder warrior caste, but no democratic collective of many clones fighting in perfect coordination for altruistic reasons. That´s just a little, conventional aspect of the whole thing, but the fact that the war machinery is the main protagonist and can optimize its killing ability to a level even pure AIs might not be able to, is an interesting, fresh sci fi aspect. Space warfare against the dark macho force All in all, it´s stress and could be compared to having unthankful kids who both don´t follow orders and have own imaginations about what to do with their life. They don´t cry for help, instead, they tell one to go home, have their own ideas, keep following the same stupid ideologies and systems humans used to have for long periods of time too. That´s always tricky, because playing around with the prime directive means many duties and less fun, because these stupid aliens don´t do what one wants. How much should I uplift you? More stone age tribe pimping But the fact that a kind of neural correlate of consciousness and personality, a digital mini me, could realistically be constructed after the impossible task of getting the data and working algorithms out of freaking annoying meatspace, is mindblowing. Instead he's become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner.Īway from the only, poor single, Bob technobabble focus towards more characterizations, interactions with real humans, implications, and open questions about consciousness, love, and immortality with a little portion of apocalypse and space warfare.Īs soon as it´s technically possible, a Bob simply cannot die, except she/he is so lazy to keep no backups and have an adrenaline junkie problem at the same time, although there is nobody anymore and the reactions have to be activated. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9% of the human race nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition And the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food.īob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. But that's the only part of the plan that's still in one piece. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe.īob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. Bob Johansson didn't believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock.
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