Robogenesis

March 14, 2011
Roboticist Wilson (How to Survive a Robot Uprising) turns to fiction with this bland and derivative series of connected vignettes describing a rebellion by humanity's robot helpers. Looking back on the war, Cormac Wallace, soldier in the human resistance, offers portentous framing commentary for recordings taken by evil computer program Archos. Many of the accounts were obtained under torture or other extreme circumstances, yet the narrators are curiously devoid of feeling ("As I watch my blood smearing behind me on the tile floor, I think, shit, man, I just mopped that") as domestic robots kill, soldier robots go haywire, airplanes attempt to collide, people fight to survive, and a resistance forms. Steven Spielberg has optioned the property; perhaps the melodrama will play better on the screen than it does on the page.

April 20, 2015
In this sequel to Wilson's high-tech near-future thriller Robopocalypse, the artificially intelligent Archos R-14, supposedly defeated, lives on. It has released robotic parasites that change humans into cyborgs in preparation for a new war against its ancestor, Archos R-8. Meanwhile another AI, Alpha Zero, has settled into the U.S. military installation at Cheyenne Mountain, determined to create a world where humanoids can live free on their own terms. Wilson populates a fairly familiar post-apocalyptic landscape with sly refugees and weary soldiers whose newly augmented skeletons and senses are turning them into "walking weapon" in a chaotic war that will decide the fate of intelligence and humanity on Earth. This Hollywood-ready techno-thriller is packed to the brim with enough tough characters and brutal conflict to satisfy the most hardcore video gamers and action movie fans.

May 15, 2014
Man meets machine in the second act of the war to end all wars: Robopocalypse 2.0.The first book in this series, Robopocalypse (2011)-a recounting of a war between humans and a powerful new artificial intelligence-seemed like a stand-alone in the manner of Max Brooks' World War Z, despite its cinematic appeal. Apparently Wilson has decided a follow-up is in order. While this entry maintains the tension of the original's run-and-gun warfare against a multiplicity of post-Terminator killing machines, the Matrix-like intrigue of the artificial intelligence's murky origins is lacking here. To catch up, in the first book, the good guys killed the AI called Archos by destroying its mainframe. But early in this book, a copy of Archos reveals to Russian janitor Vasily Zaytsev that many copies exist and are at odds with an earlier version calling itself Arayt Shah. "In response, I triggered the New War," the AI explains. "I decimated the human race, regrettably. But I did so with one purpose: to forge a hybrid fighting force capable of surviving the True War-a war that has been initiated and is being fought by superintelligent machines. Instead of simply discarding your species, as the others would, I have transformed your kind into a powerful ally." From there, Wilson straightforwardly revisits his main characters, including the young warrior Lark Iron Cloud of Gray Horse Army; biomechanically enhanced big sister Mathilda Perez; and our third hero, Cormac Wallace of Brightboy squad. Zombie fans will find much to love in the grotesque fusions between men and bots that are essential to the plot. More emotional sequences visit Japanese engineer Takeo Nomura and his robot queen from Robopocalypse and our bold janitor, who advises his robot opponents, "I may be a simple man, but I am very good with an ax."A satisfying but perfunctory installment that suffers from a bit of second-act similarity.

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Starred review from May 15, 2014
Wilson's Robopocalypse (2011), which told the story of a sentient artificial intelligence's plot to wipe out humanity via the narratives of various characters, became something of a pop-culture sensation. It's a good novel, but its sequel is superior in every way. The author preserves the oral-history structure and keeps several of the characters from the first book (including Cormac Wallace and Mathilda Perez), but he veers off in a new and frightening direction. The story is set in the years immediately after the New War; Archos R-14, the AI who very nearly destroyed the human race, is dead, but that doesn't mean humanity's troubles are over. Here's the short list: a civilization to rebuild; a growing discord between robotically modified humans (victims of Archos' horrific experiments) and the unmodified; dangerous robotic creatures running rampant; and a new kind of threat, one even more dangerous than Archos. The writing here is much more visceral and polished than it was in the earlier novel. In fact, the first several pages of this book's first chapter, in which a character is attacked by a robotic parasite, are more frightening and more memorable than the entirety of Robopocalypse. An astounding novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)