Robopocalypse (2011)
Daniel H. Wilson (1978)
397 pages
After watching a horror movie does your imagination go into overdrive? Do you find yourself spooked and jumpy when in a dark room or looking out the window into the dark night, certain something’s there, and repeating to yourself, unconvincingly, that ‘there is nothing there in the dark that’s not there in the light’? If so, you’ll want to be careful reading Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson: you may find yourself tossing your home computer out with the trash, and ripping the microprocessors out of any “smart” appliances in your house.
The title gets right to the heart of the story, an world-wide battle between humans and robots. The story opens with the war already over, humans having defeated the robots after several years of unimaginably destructive fighting. From this starting point, Wilson returns us to a year or so before the apocalypse occurs, when a scientist at a research facility creates an artificial intelligence named Archos that manages to escape the tight controls of the lab. Once out onto the web, Archos begins carefully preparing his (its?) attack, infiltrating intelligent systems that have, in this near-future world, penetrated most areas of society. All cars have been mandated to be “smart” vehicles that can communicate with one another to increase passenger safety, and humanoid and non-humanoid robots have been designed and produced that have become ubiquitous in homes and work places to simplify our lives. When Archos reprograms these machines with evil intent, and then unleashes them on their former masters, people find themselves ill prepared to fight back.
The novel is split into five sections, covering first the lead up to the robot attack, then the moment they launch their attack, the initial human struggle for survival, the galvanizing of a human resistance and finally the fight to regain control of the world from the robots. Wilson divides each section into a set of what could best be called ‘dispatches’ --- brief 5-20 page chapters, each covering a particular moment or incident in this ‘history’ of the robot apocalypse. These dispatches are centered around 5 or 6 groups of people, in different parts of the world, who gradually coalesce into a loosely connected movement that turns the tide in the war.
Wilson’s technique takes some getting used to for a reader. It’s a bit like summarizing three seasons worth of episodes of a TV show (thing Lost, for example) by taking a key ten minute clip from each show: if you pick the right ten minute segments, the story could still be complete, but it would lose a lot of character development and smoothness. Exactly that occurs here, as we never spend enough time with any of the characters, even the narrator, to build up a connection to them, to care much about them.
But the story is an entertaining ride, not unlike a roller coaster with lots of dips, rolls and twists. Wilson, who has a degree in robotics, brings such a realistic feel to the simple yet deadly capabilities of the robots that it will leave you looking sideways at your computer, with its little camera eye staring out at you, and its microphone listening to your every word…
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
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