Robogenesis: A Novel
*Starred Review* 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. --David Pitt