Name: Jackie Zhang's review of We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
Item: We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Rating: 5
Author: Jackie Zhang

Dennis E. Taylor

Bobiverse fans: a signed limited edition of all three books in a boxed set, signed by the author, is now available on Amazon. Look for The Bobiverse [Signed Limited Edition] on Amazon Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Ian Day

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

Jackie Zhang

Bob becomes a computer and also a spaceship
Flies around in space doing cool space things with his newfound computing power

A nice refreshing take on the sci-fi genre!

Adam Goehrig-Bawany

Entertaining and humorous story. I enjoyed it and hope to read the rest in the series.

Anthony Bosio

4 or 4.5. Robert Johansen is a tech engineer who just sold his start-up enterprise for a whole lot of money. He decides to spend at least part of it on signing up for cryogenic preservation service. The very next day, he is hit by a car while crossing the street and dies. He wakes up and learns that his brain has been scanned and uploaded into a computer so that he can train to become the AI for a space exploration probe ship. Scouting for liveable planets for humans to colonize.

This is a sci-fi adventure comedy romp with a bit of philisophical musing, but not too deep. The tone is optimistic and it is definitely not meant to be gritty or realistic. The humor is geek media culture references with a side of dad jokes. I smirked regularly. There are threats, but they don't feel really high stakes because Bob (and his copies) are nearly all-powerful and are constantly inventing and upgrading technologies and building them with their bots and setting up autofactories that build and run themselves. It was a very entertaining read, especially as an audiobook. The narrator's performance is excellent and he is able to make clear the different personalities of all the AI offspring of Bob. I will read more of the Bobiverse.

Cheryl Hedlund

4 or 4.5. Robert Johansen is a tech engineer who just sold his start-up enterprise for a whole lot of money. He decides to spend at least part of it on signing up for cryogenic preservation service. The very next day, he is hit by a car while crossing the street and dies. He wakes up and learns that his brain has been scanned and uploaded into a computer so that he can train to become the AI for a space exploration probe ship. Scouting for liveable planets for humans to colonize.

This is a sci-fi adventure comedy romp with a bit of philisophical musing, but not too deep. The tone is optimistic and it is definitely not meant to be gritty or realistic. The humor is geek media culture references with a side of dad jokes. I smirked regularly. There are threats, but they don't feel really high stakes because Bob (and his copies) are nearly all-powerful and are constantly inventing and upgrading technologies and building them with their bots and setting up autofactories that build and run themselves. It was a very entertaining read, especially as an audiobook. The narrator's performance is excellent and he is able to make clear the different personalities of all the AI offspring of Bob. I will read more of the Bobiverse.

Gillian Rose

A fun sci-fi romp. There was so much humor and nerdy references. It was very reminiscent of The Martian. Can't wait to see what the rest of the series has in store

Tomek Skupiński

I was really relieved to find out that the next part will be available in March 17'.

There is everything Sci-fi fan can hope for. Not only you will find AI, VR, Singularity and other things which are no longer dream but almost certain future, but there is also whole universe exploration part of book with huge diversity offered by different worlds.

I really recommend this book and hope for more from author.

Janice Hopper

I should like this book more than I do.

It's a good hard SF idea: an uploaded consciousness is sent out from an Earth in crisis to help find a new home for humanity. But there's a problem: Earth is a mess of warring states. Other countries are trying to do the same thing, but in conflict, rather than in cooperation. 

The consciousness in question is Bob, an engineer from 20th century earth, who was killed in a car accident. He's one of the Rich People Who Thought Cryogenics Was The Answer, though, so his head was preserved. That's how future technology was able to get his brain and mind. It's a destructive process, though, so all that's left of Bob is an uploaded consciousness. He's sent out to become essentially a Von Neumann device, creating copies of himself and sending them out through the universe.

But Bob is capable and intelligent. He rides out the problems of lack of sensory input and pretty much everything else. He has "roamers" (independent devices that serve as hands/building devices), printers (in the sense of 3-d printers) and all sorts of devices he can send out to mine planets and create new Bobs and new habitats. He's essentially immortal (if a Bob-copy is destroyed, it can be recreates, assuming there's a current back up.) It's actually a pretty amazing setup.

And honestly, I think that's my problem with it. Bob has so much power, so many capabilities, that sometimes it's hard to see where there can be any interesting conflict. When two of the Bobs go back to earth, they have to deal with pockets of squabbling humanity, even though Earth is a horrible mess which is rapidly becoming incapable of supporting human life. And there are the scions of a hostile human power that Bob keeps running into. But that's about it.

Bob's too good. And I've repaired enough equipment in my life and career that I keep thinking "something's going to break that Bob can't fix and THEN what happens???"

But if that kind of stuff doesn't nag at you, you'll probably enjoy this book. It's competence porn, which I usually like, because I like reading about people/things that are REALLY GOOD at what they do. Bob's maybe just a little too perfect FOR ME though.

Esslam Ben Ramadan

As a software engineer this was book heaven for me. It is the perfect mix of science fiction and comedy, very reminiscent of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. I was engrossed in the exploration and execution of the scientific theories by Bob(s) and love the little bits of nerd humour dropped in to keep the book light. My only criticism was that although understandable due to the many Bob(s) the chapter names names in my opinion were easily forgettable and thus I relied more on the location and events to give me an idea as to which Bob(s) was speaking.

Todd Luallen

Did not finish. I found this book offensive. So I returned it.

Kelsey Lynn

I listened to this to fill my Yahtzee Croshaw gap after finishing his books and found it enjoyable. However it didn't fill the gap unfortunately. 
 The main issue I had with this book was the formatting, I think a series of short stories wohld have suited it better as it felt like too many story lines were happening at once. Or a few of the small ancillary stories could have been dropped. It dated itself a few times with references, but without them I thought this book was older than it was (in a good way) it had a nice classic feel to it but with plenty of humor. I just feel the plethora of plotlines kept me disconnected emotionally from any of the plot lines and made the book feel lomger than it was. However it was my quickest listen to date, listening to it in 2 days. It's fun and someday I'll check out the sequels, but it didn't leave me with the rush to the bookstore for the next book sensation.

Ivan Zarea

If you liked Ready Player One, with all of its 80s nostalgia, you're probably going to enjoy this.

I didn't like Ready Player One

Dmitry Dudov

The rating is for the whole trilogy - it is a fun, solid young adult space opera.

Cecilie Nielsen

David V.

** spoiler alert **
           I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, but this quickly became one of my favorite titles that I would recommend to anyone looking for a nice, modern, fun and easy to read and digest story. One can easily imagine to happen sometime in the future. The second part of the book struggles to deliver the same amount of drama and action, but it does leave you want to grab second part, and hopefully third part.

A least in the first part so many things happen in the story in just a few pages that it really contrasts to majority of modern busineess and self-help books that would fit into a blog post but are for obvious reasons streatch to ~250 pages and boooring.

Branden Harris

Sebastian Rodriguez

Funny, fast paced and well written. The premise on AI in a silly yet interesting that'll keep you engage. The few chapters are quickly read, and it looses some speed as you read through.

Anyaconda

I love this series so much! The humor and creativity are one of a kind 🥰

22/05/2021 - Re-listened to this on audiobook (which is fabulous by the way!) and it's still one of the most funny, wholesome and interesting series. I cannot wait for book 5.

Bryan Alexander

Once again I picked up a space opera and was primed to enjoy it, only to fall ever more deeply into disappointment.

We Are Legion is an example of this science fiction subgenre. It has spacecraft, space exploration, interplanetary scheming, new technologies, robots, AI, and a good amount of action: all classic space opera stuff. The conceit is that a man of our time dies suddenly, then awakens in the future as a digital recording, thanks to some preservation technology. His new role is to drive a starship for interstellar exploration. The ship's nature is important, since it's Von Neumann probe, designed to make copies of itself and expand into space.

That last bit means we spend a lot of time with the protagonist and narrator, which is the source of some of the book's appeal, from what I can tell. Bob is a pleasant fellow, an engineer with a goofy sense of humor. He's a bit of a geek, naming his clones and new planets after sf stories, mostly, so that makes some nerds happy. He's also very practical, impatient with and skeptical of much of the human race, and intent on solving problems. Again, this appeals to some folks.

This personality is what drives the plot forward. Almost all of it takes place in space. We get a prologue in our time, introducing characters that'll disappear and never matter again. Next, we're a century in the future, and the United States is now a theocracy. Bob gets brought up to speed by a friendly scientist, then gets installed on a ship and away we go. Without spoilers, I can say that Bob flies to other stars and planets, building copies of himself and his ship, encountering threats and saving various populations. With spoilers: (view spoiler)[he starts to uplift one alien species, then saves the post-atomic-war remnants of humankind (hide spoiler)].

Looking at that paragraph, you might think I'd enjoy this book. Sounds like some interesting space opera. Alas, it's very, very weak stuff.

For one, I think it's aimed at people who either don't know much science fiction beyond a few tv shows, or those who just don't care. Everything in it has been done for decades. Anne "McDragon" McCaffery did the mind-in-ship idea in The Ship Who Sang way back in 1969, and explored the issue far more deeply. Von Neumann machines have appeared in fiction so many times they have their own Wikipedia page; even Lexx does more with the concept than Bob. The spoilerized plot points I hid above: ditto. Bob sails through all of this very lightly, just glancing over the surface.

For another, I found Bob to be increasingly dull company. Naming a clone after Homer Simpson and a new planet Vulcan is cute, but doesn't do much for a personality. Bob's focus on engineering enters cliche territory as he really isn't interested in humanity otherwise. Politics just bores and insults him. Social structures and culture are mostly based on tool usage. And women - I said this was a cliche - barely exist, as Jenny points out. Software is more interesting to him than embodied people. Sexuality and romance are eerily absent. 

I think I would have enjoyed this when I was 12. It might speak to young adult readers just getting into sf. Especially boys and young men, or anyone wanting a vacation from most of humanity. It might also be comfort reading for adults who are looking for non-challenging reading.

NB: I listened to this on Audible, and commend the reader for doing the pop culture voices and also for really getting into the character's excitement.

Jesper Bylund

Fantastic depiction of one possible future for the human race 

I loved the gran scope of the vision. While it spanned many years and many characters it never loses sight of the details that make bob interesting. A great read, through and through.

Jack Baty

I don't know how to feel about this one. The humor stopped helping somewhere around the half-way point, but there were some fun moments.

The biggest issue was that much of it felt like I was listening to a first-person narration of the early Warcraft games.

Ian Day &
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

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