WE ARE LEGION (WE ARE BOB), Bobiverse Book 1, by Dennis E. Taylor

Von Neumann Would Cheer

What happens when you have your brain frozen after death when you die? You wake up as a machine intelligence exploring the galaxy. At least that’s the way it works in this novel. Many science fiction writers have explored the idea of freezing the brain on the hopes of resurrection in some distant and more medically advanced future. Notably Norman Spinrad in Bug Jack Barron and Larry Niven in A World Out of Time. I mention these classic novels because this book reminds me of the way these writers treated the subject: They extrapolated out from the basic concept—the idea—to the impact on the people involved. This is the most basic element of science fiction, the thing that differentiates SF from mainstream fiction.

Niven has one of his characters wake up as a corpse-sickle thousands of years in the future. (Larry Niven appears as SF writer Lawrence Vienn in this novel.) Spinrad explores the more realistic slant that such ideas are money making scams. But here Dennis Taylor goes in a different direction with his character Bob becoming a sort of Being John Malcovitch figure where various copies of himself become the predominant personality of the universe. I really latched onto this idea and am eager to learn where Mr. Taylor takes the Bobs in the next book.

I cannot think of a more fitting narrator for the Bobiverse than Ray Porter. He can be machine-like when required but more typically he can offer all the nuances of character and variations on a theme of the different Bobs that this book demands.