In Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson filters the now-widespread fears of the end of the world through the lens of technology. What emerges is a book that is engaging and fun to read. After all, who doesn’t love to think about how they would handle themselves when society crumbles?
At first glance, the book follows a structure similar to Max Brooks’ World War Z, only this time it’s a retrospective account of the end of civilization as brought about by robots rather than zombies. The robots are far more dangerous than zombies, however. While traditional zombies rely on pure numbers to overwhelm the humans, the robots in Robopocalypse are smarter than us, faster than us, and are driven by pure reason and logic.
Despite the similarities, what sets Robopocalypse in a class ahead of World War Z is that Robopocalypse has more of a coherent story throughout, rather than being a collection of vignettes. To me, this made Robopocalypse a more enjoyable read. It follows the rise of the machines from the birth of the first sentient AI (named Archos, Greek for “master”) to the war’s conclusion.
The fact that the story is told in the past tense removes some of the tension, but no more so than knowing that the ship was going to sink at the end of Titanic.
Having read several of Wilson’s nonfiction books, I knew going into Robopocalypse that the technology would be handled in a way that was rooted in reality. I wasn’t disappointed. In contrast to the pseudoscience of viruses, meteorites, or toxic waste employed in zombie fiction, the robots in this novel seemed plausible.
In a world today where our garbage is picked up by trucks with giant mechanical arms, our floors are cleaned by little self-propelled vacuums, and all our financial transactions are conducted in the digital ether, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that these automatic conveniences may one day get a little too smart. If we aren’t careful, we may make ourselves obsolete.