Robopocalypse
A Novel
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4.1 • 2.1K Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This terrifying tale of humanity’s desperate stand against a robot uprising is the most entertaining sci-fi thriller in years. • “Terrific, page-turning fun.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly
Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Excellent summer read
This is an excellent work of science-fiction in keeping with, and informed by, the tradition of Asimov and Clark. Not since reading Niven's "Ringworld" for the first time has a novel of this genre engrossed my attention so thoroughly. Once it has you this book is very hard to put down; the author's voice and style carry you effortlessly through multiple narrators to the rewarding conclusion.
Detractors may feel that the novel at times feels like the treatment for the screenplay to a Hollywood action film, but to them I extend a generous (and emphatic) middle digit- if only more of our summer entrainment were treated as thoughtfully, crafted as intelligently and executed as adroitly as this, perhaps we could finally be free of formulaic serial franchise blockbuster flops. I look forward to Dreamworks' cinematic interpretation, and congratulate the author on his additional financial reward.
Buy this book.
'Nuff said.
Truly amazing
This novel will want you to read it to the end. It blends science fiction with the end of the world an creates something entirely different. A must read.
Excellent!
From the first few pages, I was drawn into a believable world reminiscent of the familiarity felt from living through a tragic event such as 9/11. Dan Wilson's novel about a world taken over by robots conveys the importance of working together as a species to the reader. It's a suspenseful thriller that will leave you reading it from beginning to end from the time you first pick it up. Definitely a good buy.