Rashmi bookmarks “Robopocalypse”

Daniel H. Wilson tells us the story of a time long, long in the future, when robots rise in an effort to take over humanity, and the subsequent resistance that rises with equal heart and soul from around the world. In building “Archos” - an artificial intelligence program - with a view to testing the limits of evolvement, Professor Nicholas Wasserman unwittingly unleashes a power beyond all imagination. This is the story of how a mere handful came together and led a devastated world into a new age - preserved for all eternity in a black cube discovered by Cormac Wallace, leader of the Brightboy Squad.

There were so many things that made this an exceptional read for me. First of all, I loved the basic premise of the story: Archos wanted to learn from and about life; it said it could learn more from a worm than a billion lifeless planets. The robots’ need for universal control ironically came from a place of preserving Life itself.

I really liked the fact that the final victory is to no one person’s credit. Takeo Nomura, a factory repairman in Tokyo, Japan; Lurker, a 17 year old prankster in London, UK; Mathilda Perez, the 10 year old girl with the toy ‘Baby-Comes-Alive’ and Specialist Paul Blanton of the Osage Nation in USA … the whole world comes together, and through some key people and their key decisions, the resistance is brought to its final stages.

I really liked the narrative, which not only weaved in and out of different parts of the world, but also back and forth in time. More importantly, the scope of the story was so epic: it didn’t just go from Point A, a mysterious rogue robot to Point Z, the end with a horrific bloodbath or generic human triumph. The storytelling digs so much deeper, to answer where it all began and question where it will all end. Mikiko’s song “Awakening”, and its final denouement in that momentous coming together of the Brightboy Squad and the Freeborn Squad as they marched to the Ragnorak Intelligence fields in Alaska to meet Archos, was such a glorious climax to a grand story.

I’ll conclude with this point - and although this has been touched upon in countless books and films before - for the very first time I was forced to give serious thought to the whole question of the difference between human and robot. Given that both think and feel, is the meat on our bones really all we have to our credit to call ourselves Human?

Told in a sci-fi setting (the best of all genres), this story had everything, from horror to drama, from despair to hope. An excellent read that had me thoroughly spellbound and constantly clamouring for more.