Paperback, 308 pages
English language
Published April 14, 2017 by Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place …
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.
An incredible space story starting in a Dystopian future Earth. A few twists here and there, and certainly looked forward to seeing what happened in between breaks. Each chapter left you wanting more.
Ended quite abruptly though, but makes sense as there are more of them in the series.
Quick sci-fi read that has humor, cultural references, and problem solving. Pulpy and remotely plausible. My biggest complaint is the abrupt end
As all three books were published in 2016-2017, it appears the author had all three written and ready. I like a first trilogy book that stands on its own, and this one barely does. The ending is a milestone, but there are other balls still in the air, and other mysteries yet unsolved. From a friends review, it appears the second book doesn't solve many of those, so I will be sure to budget the time to read both at once.
A fourth book was published a few years later, in the decade that was 2020. Taylor has other books also, and I look forward to reading something outside this universe (Bobiverse).
