"Bobiverse" trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor - Criticisms

We are Legion (book 1), For We Are Many (book 2), All The Worlds (book 3).

► Overview Review:

These were easy reading sci-fi and they can't have been that bad, given that I read all three consecutively. I know there's now a forth book in the series, "Heaven's River". But I'm going to treat the first 3 as a stand alone trilogy, seeing as they round off the plot arcs at the end of the third. Also, I don't have the interest to read any more, for the reasons below...

I'm a little puzzled why these are reviewed so highly. I'm assuming that they have been marketed and sold in such a targeted way that virtually only the target audience, of technically minded ASD (autistic spectrum) male sci-fi fans have generally bought them (including me, I guess). Which is fine. [I later decided it has far broader appeal, too, see addendum, below.]

It seems like the author may well fit this description, too. As there's only really one major character in the books, and he feels like he may be fairly autobiographical, in nature. The rest are flat and unconvincing. With human societies not behaving plausibly, either. 

The complete opposite of all the intrigue and Machiavellian twists and turn in something like Game of Thrones. Or the refreshingly character driven plot of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice trilogy (which I also intend to review, but it's been less obvious what to say about those).

It's a perfectly valid choice to focus on the nuts and bolts of events, instead of human intrigue - there's plenty enough of that already, in other genres. But the challenges the author comes up with, for his guy(s) to deal with, are all uninspired, too; there's outright tedious repetition throughout book 2, that feels like padding.

Virtually every crisis and setback is because a Bob was implausibly unprepared. The opposite of Culture ship mind competency-porn. All the close battles came down to the wire on a purely arbitrary basis: the opposed forces were nearly exactly matched in numbers. Just... because. I was always more irritated than excited with this lazy plotting.

In general, Taylor avoids the main virtue of the sci-fi genre: exploring possible major changes to civilisation. The axiomatic fiction technology that enables the setting of the story stands in isolation. Humans remain standard humans. Even the digital human(s) don't change or grow in a meaningful way. And there's no insight into the development of technology or science.

So, not a recommendation. Although, if you were bored enough to have read the first novel, don't expect things to improve or ideas to really develop much in the 2 sequels. 

► Specific Criticisms [Spoilers]:

The initial scope seems exciting: what if you (an ASD software engineer type guy) got to become a sentient Von-Neumann probe?

Ok, I always accept implementing some fantasy science at the beginning. His axioms are that a reactionless "SURGE" drive has been invented, with the same mechanisms allowing instantaneous "SUDDAR" scanning. Plus the harder sci-fi of (fairly big) light based processor cores, able to faithfully simulate a scanned, biological brain (many times faster than real-time). 3D printers able to (slowly) build anything, including their own print-heads, from materials scavenged from asteroid belts and scrap. That's all fine.

But Taylor goes further, massively contriving the opening plot to crowbar in a 30 something American, male protagonist from a contemporary setting. Bob's explicitly into Star Trek, Star Wars, and the the most well known sci-fi novels. So he can use many references to these directly; smart business sense of memetics. A little cringe.

Then, he has to skip Bob forwards a hundred or so years, to have the technological context to enable the interplanetary plot. But he doesn't have the world building imagination to really change anything fundamentally about civilisation, beyond the key, isolated enabling technologies. Only a brief mention of further devolved English grammar, and the US sliding into a regressive Christian theocratic dictatorship. This is used as a cover-all excuse for lack of any other development. Ok, so that probably sounded plausible, when there was the prospect of Trump for 8 years, etc. But what about the rest of the world...?!

His writing is as brazenly Anglo-centric as a Hollywood action blockbuster. With Australia, New Zealand and a Brit (representing Europe, hilariously) playing far bigger roles than China. Or any other part of Asia. In fact, China sends a probe, but it's apparently bound to fail, because, well, I guess goods made cheap in China, you know...

That's backwards thinking, even for the present day, with their space program visiting Mars, etc. Let alone where they're going to be a few decades, thanks to their continued staggeringly fast economic and technological growth. Plus a population 5 times that of the US. But, again, pandering to the prejudices of his English reading audience. I guess making Brazil the big bad guys was politically safer territory.

►Alternative Takes and Nonsense Oversights [More Spoilers]:

Taylor's spin on the famous interstellar self-replicating probes concept: make them more traditional starship sized. Rather than the tiny, <1kg, nanotech devices you'd need with real-world plausible propulsion. To be able to hit a significant proportion of light speed. Bigger versions of his SURGE drives are able to bend space more, for higher accelerations. Ok, logical; no real harm in making things a more human familiar scale, if trying to be more approachable to a wider audience. But the nature of the writing and genre of the books make them very niche, anyway. Can't see there being movie adaptations, despite being pre-dumbed down.

More arbitrarily, he ardently avoids solving all the problems with exponential growth in manufacturing capacity. Initially ignoring it as an option. Very frustrating. Then trotting out half arsed excuses for not simply multiplying up the 3D printers far faster. Making a running joke of one reason why, even. Yes, if resources really are that scarce, they will be a limiting factor. And sure, printing printers takes time in itself, and there might be some *very* immediate emergency... But often, years go by and they've just not bolstered production at all. For no apparent reason other than so he can set up another arbitrarily close fight or other emergency. Sigh...

Apparently the Bobs themselves just don't fancy duplicating themselves much, psychologically. OK, although they seem fine when they do. Largely they don't need many copies of themselves, as they conveniently have GUPPI, a virtually sentient AI that they pulled out of their arse digital brain interface. And AMIs (artificial machine intelligences) controlling minor craft and manufacturing facilities.

What's utterly implausible is that no one else wants to become a "replicant" like him (I see what you did there; Blade Runner reference). That's out of millions of post-apocalyptic refugees. The remnants of humanity, who have been barely clinging to life for decades, in a meteorite bombarded nuclear winter. Now subsisting on the single unpalatable food crop he's been able to start growing in space. Apparently, every single person feels like Bob's life would be too much of a chore, by comparison. Serving humanity, etc... Huh?! (Let alone political power grab motives.)

And there's no notable social changes, or hardening/affectation of the human characters pulled out the other end of this hell-scape. We get a hot female biologist lady to fall in love with. Who supposedly looks just as lovely right up to dying of old age, because everyone knows that's how love is supposed to work!

Of course this fiction fails the Bechdel test miserably. I mean, to be fair, there's not even any male characters, beside the cloned protagonist, who talk between themselves either... But there's several instances of casual misogyny and playing into stereotypes: a male boy genius alien caveman, who again probably reflects the author. Verses a backwards thinking female witchdoctor and later his ignorantly jealous female mate.

There's little/no initiatives stemming from the many humans, overall, as if they're passive NPCs in the Bob fantasy game. Like, the enclave representatives mostly just drag their feet out of dumb ignorance (or unfair malice). While the Bobs look down on humanity for having foolishly destroyed themselves. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the first Bob ship's departure is literally what triggered the apocalyptic war.

I see this as somewhat problematic writing, in mirroring (and so reinforcing) an ASD tendency to disregard one's self as a distinct part of a group or society at large. A kind of global-good mental framework that is naively selfless, at best. At worst, arrogantly presumptive and often dangerously wrong, without apology. I say this as someone who identifies as being on the spectrum (though more ADHD than ASD), and has been guilty of this thinking myself.

The aliens are unimaginative bipeds - Star Trek/Wars at best. He literally says the Deltans could be human ancestors, but for details of appearance. But have conveniently sophisticated langue skills that feel anachronistic. Then the "Others" are blatantly the antagonists from Independence Day (1996): squamous insectile appearance and merciless nature, hell bent on genocide and destructive planetary resource harvesting.

►Extropianism MIA [Ending Spoilers!]:

The Bob characters, themselves, have slightly different personalities. But this is, again, entirely arbitrary quantum magic or something dunno not going to talk about it too much... There's no earned development of their values or intelligence over time, from their many decades of experience. Potentially subjective centuries, with "frame jacking" to think at very high speeds.

Again, after the promising setup, Taylor goes out of his way to avoid exploring transhumanist issues at all. The Von-Neumann probe thing is more of a plot vehicle and reference to excite the futurist geeks, like me. There's no interest, from the Bobs, in making themselves smarter or more diverse in intelligence. They make a point of avoiding basically ever using the emotional intensity limiter, that they had built into their original programming. Let alone coaxing other humans to digitise themselves, to complement the Bob's intellectual specialism. Not until one case, virtually a the end, when it's mere plot garnish, with no time to explore issues arising from this.

Bootstrapping super-intelligence, or at least making more efficient (and more numerous) processing substrate, should have been a top priority, tactically. Again, ignored. Maybe he felt that would be too obvious, in a way. More likely to alienate a lay audience. But that's the main virtue of the sci-fi genre: exploring possible future changes. It's just feels too safe, like yet another reboot of Spider/Batman, etc. Not introducing any entirely new concepts.

The main alien threat *does* behave exponentially in their resource harvesting and manufacturing. With tiny self replicating ants (so these *are* possible after all...?). But the Others are, predictably, vanquished. Despite their massive growth scale advantage and centuries head start. Partly because they are arbitrarily small minded, in having a single swarm with a single supreme ruler. Hard to imagine how they could have developed any technology, with such closed mindedness and lack of creative culture.

Largely, the Bobs win thanks to having FTL instantaneous communication, while the Others don't. Again, no reason; entirely arbitrary. It's supposedly based on the SUDDAR tech they both use, that the aliens have used for centuries longer. Just that, one day, one of the Bobs spontaneously creates it. They make him the magically effective super-scientist character. The type often seen in lazily written TV/movies, who's hacking, sciencing, building all the things (and yet somehow is still more disposable than the more familiar main character). There's no explanation for how he's able to come up with this amazing, unparalleled breakthrough. No massively collaborative setting or interlocking industrial specialisms. No mention of even studying fundamental physics texts. Just a clever Bob; the great man fallacy.

Wiping out the Other's Dyson Sphere home system, with a one-two punch, was kinda cool. But again, arbitrary in its scope and built up to poorly in the text. It makes big fat hints at what's happening. Enough to figure it out, pretty clearly. But then pointedly ignores that it's happening, to try to make it a pleasant surprise twist. Except, only the characters are surprised, not the reader. It's implausible that many of them shouldn't have known - multiple planetary bodies went walkabouts! That's orders of magnitude beyond anything else they build, themselves. And the reason it was kept secret was an implausible one line excuse, too: wasn't sure it would work, so didn't say anything. Just half arsed wallowed in spurious hopelessness for most of a book instead...

Many other instances where the Bob's only think of something at the last minute, in the moment. When it would have been obvious during planning, which they'd have years/decades for. Again, lazily written attempts at excitement. That presumably was acceptable, for most readers.

The ordering of the chapters is often pretty arbitrary, too. Flashing forwards and back by decades in time. It felt like these might have been shuffled around after the first draft of some of the books was already finished. Just to have the big exciting plot things be teased more, earlier on, to maintain engagement. Not really adding anything to an unfolding understanding. Definitely not at all like Iain M Bank's masterful "Use of Weapons". Taylor is on the opposite end of writing talent; just barely passable. Although he is somewhat shrewd with understanding how to structure his writing and what ingredients to throw in, doing it by the numbers.


► Addendum (2021-07-08) - after posting this critique to the printSF sub-Reddit...

I stirred up up a dozen or so unique commenters, many agreeing with me and none really able to refute any of my specific points. But the book's fans downvoted the thread (and half my replies) into 50/50 ignominy (pretty much 0 karma), lol! Which shouldn't really come as a surprise, given the strong popularity of the books, and the quantity of my criticisms - plenty in there to disagree with. (Although its always a little irritating that Reddit downvotes are given for "don't like your reasoned opinions/findings" rather than reserved purely for "not relevant/inaccurate/low effort".)

The weight of all my criticisms probably did give my readers an overly negative; I'd rate book 1 2.5 to 3 out of 5 stars.

I never felt comfortable that I'd quite put my finger on the reason of strong positive reviews, with the ASD connection. I think that does account for the most avid fans. Those commenters who identified with wanting to tell humanity to "get lost" and wander off on their own, etc.

But I'd not appreciated the volume of copies sold; Bobiverse has clearly had far broader appeal, too. From looking at reviews on its Goodreads page, it seems like it has managed to bring in non-sci-fi fan readers. Some likening the prose style to "The Martian" - one of the few novels from this millennium to break the top 50 most read/reviewed sci-fi books, at #11. "We Are Legion" at #85 of their top 100 sci-fi (in 2020). Also, a page turner, and the most frequent endorsement by far is that it's "fun".

Just... "Fun".

I think the non-descriptiveness of this praise says a lot; there's a huge market for fairly simple, unchallenging, safe, familiar feeling fiction. Hard sci-fi is a niche sub-genre; it's easy for me to forget that my taste of high concept, cerebral, very cutting edge is kind of elitist, or at least alternative. Most people, and so most readers, are not extropians or xenophiles. Maybe the most lauded incumbent sci-fi authors would sell more copies by toning things down, dumbing down, being less unique, more obvious...

The majority of TV/movie sci-fi fans don't get hung up on action scenes that totally ignore the laws of physics. As used to vex me as a teen at the cinema. Nor look out for the unintuitive realities of human nature, or even self consistency within a fictional world. At most, these are just minor irritations to the majority of viewers - immediately forgotten. They want to turn their brains off and relax, after all. 

"Space-fantasy", as I'd call it, is perhaps the most mainstream sci-fi genre. Star Wars and shows that are kind of just about the space/futuristic aesthetic. So, I guess if the Bobiverse is pulling in more of that casual crowd, to something with at least themes and some trapping of hard sci-fi, I guess that's a win for my beloved type of fiction.

Although, some seem to take it's technical aspects as scientifically "solid". Which they're often not. A technology aspect I overlooked is the fusion reactors. For a large ship, OK, we have decent ideas of what that might look like. But it's just assumed that can me miniaturised down for drones, right down to baseball size bug catchers. That are still space capable with SURGE drives, despite that supposedly needing to be much bigger for good/viable acceleration rates.

Let alone little details like FTL/instantaneous communications would mean sending information back in time (as a commenter pointed out). But so many shows/fictions ignore this, for the necessary convenient fallacy of a universal "now". Relativistically Doppler-shifted nuclear explosion radiation was a neat idea, from him. But its last minute revelation didn't make sense; it should probably have come up earlier, too, and definitely have been anticipated by Bobs in battle planning.

A more dismaying insight (from the Book's popularity) is that most sci-fi fan's aren't necessarily socially progressive. At least not enough to be bothered by aspects of these books that I was. In fact, many famous authors have been libertarian (or even authoritarian?). Some xenophobes too (Lovecraft, for a start). Space genre characters are infamously as white-washed as real world astronaut corps, too.

Taylor is very directly anti-religious, from the start of book 1 (which is ironically a titled with a bible quote): Christian fundamentalists as recurring bad guys. But I guess religiosity doesn't corelate as directly with conservatism (and republicanism) as I might mentally approximate. Also, mildly religious readers are perhaps not even put off by denigration of fundamentalist characters (and excesses), who they don't identify with, of course. 

There's upwell of "anti-woke" reactionary sentiment, currently. And no strong reason sci-fi fans wouldn't be split either side of this political polarisation.

I'm hesitantly pondering how much correlation there is between Incels and identifying with the Bob characterisation. (Shallow definition of alone and lonely, at least, not necessarily vocally attacking women.) Right off the bat, we find that Bob's just out of a long term relationship with a woman who's messed him up emotionally. There's no sex (scenes) at all in the trilogy. (Complete opposite of Banks there, too, lol!) Only one Bob catches feelings for a woman (who's very tolerant of his mildly sexist/antiquated jokes). So this one is a deviant, perhaps; the others don't seem jealous. Would benifit of the doubt be too generous? Is this is more of an asexual identity, than a women hating one?

Another, later but great comment, pointed out the disturbing similarity of the Bob's unilateral decision making (and power over the useless squabbling masses) with "Techbro/Nerd culture". This attitude of recklessly throwing technical fixes around is termed by Doctorow (in "Attack Surface", which I'm currently reading) as "solutionism". As per Evgeny Morozov, as written of in 2013 & 2014 (before illegal Facebook data scraping and excessive targeted ad spending stole the UK's Brexit referendum, etc). 

Also, that the Bobs, with their self proclaimed Homo Sideria identity (sideria = stars/luminous) very much fit the Robinson Crusoe (1719 fiction) archetype: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist. ... The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."