Not Till We Are Lost – Dennis E. Taylor

Oh look, another one of these.

Frankly, I need some light reading. I was pretty happy to see this floating around, and I was happy reading it.

The Bobiverse, of which this is the 6th book, follows the story of a man who dies in our time and wakes up as a Von Neumann probe sometime in the future. This transhuman jump leads to various sci-fi misadventures – Not the sophisticated Asimov kind, not the Rick and Morty kind, but a sort of half-way point between. They are smart enough that I don’t always follow the science, but ‘pop-culture nerdy’ enough for a mass audience. It doesn’t have the fawning nerdy tone of something like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, but it is something heading towards that tone. As the Von Neumann probe ‘Bob’ starts to clone itself, each clone gives itself a name from some aspect of modern pop-culture.

This addition to the series? A lot happens in these books, and I feel like at this point the author has really given up on making the individual self contained. Reading this, you know there is going to be sequel, as some threads of the story here are initiated but sort of left hanging. The Bobs create an AI which kind just ends up lose in the universe, and I guess we will see where that goes in the sequel. There is also the discovery of the remains of a former galactic federation of planets that have fucked off from the galaxy when they discover that there is a galaxy ending threat heading towards this galaxy. That too will be picked up in the next book. Perhaps the most interesting thread here is the discovery of a world with dragon like creatures, in which a Bob and his companion get involved in their politics.

As far as sci-fi goes, this series isn’t anything great. It’s the equivalent of a McDonald’s meal – you were hungry for something, it was cheap and available, and it does scratch some kind of an itch. It’s competently written enough to be enjoyable. I don’t eat McDonald’s all that often, and considering I have to wait for the next book in the series, yea, I don’t think this ruined my reading diet. I will have to reread this review to try to remember what is going on when the next book come out.