We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
Back to sci-fi.
Not a Book Report
I enjoy reflecting on the movies, TV, books and other media that I consume. I’m notoriously sentimental. This series documents the books that I read. These aren’t reviews or recommendations. Just a list. For me. Mostly so that I can page through what I read, where I was, and when.
Why did I read it?
I had gotten all caught up on David McCloskey’s novels and wanted to get back into sci-fi. Having read everything I could earlier this year and last year by John Scalzi, I looked around for something similar and found this.
What is it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | We Are Legion (We Are Bob) |
| Author | Dennis E. Taylor |
| Year Published | 2016 |
| Format | Kindle |
| Pages | 383 |
| ASIN | B01LWAESYQ |
Publisher Summary
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.
How did I read it?
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Date Started | December 16, 2025 |
| Date Finished | December 21, 2025 |
| Places Read | Lisbon, UA 943 |
Notes - No Spoilers
- I loved it! Was not sure about the first third, worried we would make this too much of a book about the North American government in the future, but absolutely enchanted with how it played out.
- The plot lines and the diverging Bobs made it a blast. And I love their attitudes and differences.
- Just brilliant. So fun.
- Written well before the LLM revolution and clearly considerate and prescient of some of the challenges (Guppy taking a long time to grok colloquialisms and brevity).