We Are Legion - We Are Bob by Dennis E. TaylorMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
We Are Legion - We Are Bob (hereafter WLWB) tells the story of a self-aware Von Neumann probe, seeded with the personality of one Bob from 21st century Earth. The story tracks Bob (and his copies) from the initial confusion of waking up as a computerized simulation to being launched into space and spreading out into multiple star systems.
There's a definite feel of two different books in WLWB. The first half deals with how the world gets from the present-day to the near future when Bob's probe is being sent to the stars. It's not particularly subtle about the dangers of fanaticism, extremism, and a fragmented society with little or no cooperation. There's a lot about the technology being used to send out the probe, mostly recognizable as near-future extensions of what we can do today. Once Bob launches, though, the book feels very different, becoming pretty much a space opera as the technology becomes wildly advanced, multiple versions of Bob start spreading out through the galaxy, and they start to find extra-terrestrial life and artifacts.
Reading WLWB reminded me a lot of playing a space 4X game. Start small, survive an early skirmish with opposing forces, establish a base, expand your resources, spread out to new systems, more battles, discover other life, even go on a quest (saving humans from Earth). It's not an exact analogy, but it's close enough that it came to mind several times as I read through the book. And like playing such games, reading WLWB requires quite a bit of patience as you keep track of lots of different disconnected happenings across the galaxy.
I found the novel's concept interesting and enjoyed the various takes on Bob's personality, but even I felt things had gotten extremely fragmented toward the end of the book. Shifting back and forth across half a dozen versions of Bob in various star systems made it difficult for me to feel any real investment in any of the various story threads or characters. There's simply too much going on. And it doesn't help that several of those threads are largely left hanging (presumably to be picked up in the next book in the series).
WLWB is a fun read for science fiction fans who want an interesting take on how galactic exploration might begin. If that concept doesn't grab you, though, I wouldn't recommend it. Without that hook to hold your interest, WLWB is likely to just feel too long and scattered to be enjoyable.
