Robopocalypse: Skynet's more human tolerant little brother


THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING.

Robopocalypse (Daniel H Wilson) starts in a different position than most machine armageddon stories, beginning 20 minutes after the Humans have won the war with ‘Big Rob’. Our narrator, Cormac ‘Bright Boy’ Wallace is spraying bursts of fire out across the frozen Alaskan tundra to confuse a swarm of mini-bots called stumpers into premature explosion. Stumpers contain compartmentalized chemicals that are mixed when they feel the warmth of a human leg, leading to a debilitating POP and the loss of an appendage.

Bright Boy Squad locates something unexpected in the frozen expanse- a sentient storage device that has been collecting insane amounts of data from the world since the activation day of Archos (the AI ).  The book follows a similar presentation as  World War Z (Max Brooks), depicting the novel as a series of short stories in a historical compilation of key events from pre-war to the end, recorded by the device, and cross commented by Wallace.

Unlike Skynet in the Terminator universe or the variations of Skynet in the novels crafted by SM Stirling, Archos seems to have a level of tolerance for Humans. It has plans for humans that do not include extinction, though a 99% population decrease seems to be in an allowed range. I believe that this is actually worse for humans than annihilation. It opens the door to uncomfortable questions.

Highlight for me was chapter 2, with Archos awakening and it’s path to world connectivity.


Approaching complex technical topics from a simple layman perspective, this should be a very approachable novel for most readers.

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