Book notes: For We Are Many by Dennis Taylor

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For We Are Many: Bobiverse, Book 2 by Dennis E. Taylor

Synopsis:

“The highly anticipated sequel to Audible’s Best of 2016 – Science Fiction winner, We Are Legion (We Are Bob); a book listeners are calling “so much fun”, “what science fiction was meant to be”, and what would happen if “Andy Weir and Ernest Cline had a lovechild”. 

Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe. 

Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that’s the only part of the plan that’s still in one piece. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9 percent of the human race; nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable; a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity; the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition; and the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food. 

Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he’s become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner. “

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Opening thoughts:

I was pretty excited for this book because the first one was amazing. The storytelling was phenomenal, the dialogue was well done, and the concept is was super interesting. The first book made me want to read the entire series.

Key notes:

Chapter 1: Sky God

Chapter 2: Colony Site

Chapter 3: Life in Camelot

• He tried to explain to Archimedes how he makes more Bobs
  • He actually doesn’t know how many of them there are
  • They both agreed to not ask questions about things outside of what’s important

Chapter 4: Water Planet

• This new planet which was completely covered in water with no land he called Poseidon
  • However it was habitable with these large plant like mats above the water
  • He also made two more Bob clones Skinner and Johnny Quest

Chapter 5: Progress

• Colonizing Vulcan was a very complicated process

Chapter 6: Contacting Bill

Chapter 7: Back to Work

• The surviving nations back on Earth were still arguing about who should be next to leave

Chapter 8: Farming Satellites

• Colonizing Vulcan was a very complicated process

Chapter 9: Something is Out There

• Bob and Marvin figured there must be another Apex predator who hunted the Deltans hidden somewhere

Chapter 10: Genocide

• Some other presence had killed billions of sentient beings collected their bodies and left the planet in ruins

Chapter 11: Mating Dance

• They found evidence that the Apex predator who hunted the Deltans might still be close by

Chapter 12: Bob Calling

Chapter 13: Investigating the Others

• Mario discussed with his four Bob’s about investigating outward, having an open comes to relay information, and having a kill switch in case they are captured and disassembled

Chapter 14: sabotage

• The terrorist group on earth Vehement started to target cattle and killed off a bunch of them

Chapter 15: A Visit from Bill

Chapter 16: Hunted

Chapter 17: We’ve Lost A Drone

• They discovered the thing that was hunting Deltans when it attacked and destroyed one of the drones

Chapter 18: It’s Getting Worse

Chapter 19: Prey

• He managed to bomb the island of the flying predators, but the Deltans asked Bob to leave them alone

Chapter 20: Parasite

• On Vulcan they discovered a parasite that was laying eggs in people

Chapter 21: Attacks Continue

• Vehement attacks were getting worse, as they managed to get into one of the food production doughnut stations in space

Chapter 22: Fallout

• The Deltans didn’t want to fall back, and Marvin said he was going to takeoff soon

Chapter 23: Vehement

• Riker figured there was some way of communication the terrorists were using but he hadn’t figured it out yet

Chapter 24: Visiting Marvin

Chapter 25: Rabbits

• On Vulcan, they found that rabbits like to eat the poisonous vine
  • They also discovered the bronco animals were safe to eat as barbecue

Chapter 26: Selling Poseidon

• Riker started to suspect that Homer might have been hacked

Chapter 27: Luke Returns

Chapter 28: Et Tu, Homer

• They cleaned up Homer and resolved to find the hackers
• They found Vehement central was in New Zealand

Chapter 29: Emergency

Chapter 30: Found Something

• An enemy ship found and was about to capture one of the Bob’s before Bob self-destructed

Chapter 31: Taking Care of Business

Chapter 32: Linus

• Linus brought Henry, the Australian replicant who suffered because of China, into the VR to meet Bill and get up to speed with all the advancements

Chapter 33: Trouble in Paradise

• The Deltan population was facing problems with increasing population density, but it was better than how Bob originally found them

Chapter 34: Moose

• Bill managed to finish a working prototype of a moose android that he could move around in on the surface of Ragnarok

Chapter 35: Sales Call

• Howard and Bridget, a scientist on Vulcan, perfected their Irish whiskey and had a business dinner date

Chapter 36: Astroid Movers

Chapter 37: He’s Gone

• Homer self-destructed and erased his back ups
  • He kept having flashbacks of being controlled and couldn’t deal with it anymore
• He left a note to the other Bob’s telling them to find the perpetrator

Chapter 38: Following Up

• One of the Bob’s was engaged by two other ships who had faster ships but shorter range of scans

Chapter 39: Bob-Moot

• All of the Bobs gathered to discuss the advanced race with superior technology to them
• They had to decide whether or not they could win a war once it was declared

Chapter 40: Gotcha

• Riker found the Vehement hacker

Chapter 41: Casualties

• The Deltans started to kill each other
• Bob discussed with Archimedes about using reverse psychology to make some Deltans want to move out of the village

Chapter 42: Business

Chapter 43: An Exchange of Words

• Riker killed the New Zealand hacker, destroyed the Vehement headquarters, and exposed the nation leader who cooperated with them at the UN meeting 

Chapter 44: Baseball

• They were making progress with the android analog which means they’ll soon be able to put themselves in a real body 

Chapter 45: Replication

• Howard brought up the idea of figuring out the process of creating a new replicant

Chapter 46: Klown Kar Planet

Chapter 47: New Village

• Bob’s plan to help Archimedes use reverse psychology on the trouble making villagers worked and they ended up leaving

Chapter 48: Operation

Chapter 49: Arrival

• They were trying to figure out how to colonize the water planet to Poseidon 

Chapter 50: Second Expedition

• They took out the second Brazilian probe Medeiros and found two more habitable planets 

Chapter 51: Wedding

• He gave his share of the distillery Company to Bridget and Stephane as a wedding gift and told them he was severing ties so that he can leave Vulcan
• He and Bridget said they wish they had met when they were alive and they were both upset

Chapter 52: Bullwinkle

Chapter 53: Testing

Chapter 54: Stuff is Happening

Chapter 55: Contact

• They made contact with the Others and found out they simply desired to increase their population and consume others as food

Chapter 56: Descendants

• Archimedes and his family were growing and the Deltans were growing in population
• Bob’s banishment never got overturned but his legend within the village evolved to something similar to Satan and that of suffering

Chapter 57: Moot

• All the Bob’s gathered to discuss their findings on the Other’s species and began to plan for how they would defend against them

Chapter 58: News

Chapter 59: Another One

Chapter 60: Arrival

• The system that Claude had been investigating seemed to be a perfect planet candidate, but a potential target for the Others down the line

Chapter 61: Starting Over

• They started the plans to build battle cruisers and more capable weapons for fighting

Chapter 62: Departure

Chapter 63: The Pav

Chapter 64: Moot

Chapter 65: Grandpa

• Archimedes was now a grandpa

Chapter 66: It’s Happening

• The Others started to head to one of their planets so the Bobs starting to prepare for their surprise attack

Chapter 67: Bad News

• Howard’s friend Stephane was dying of a terminal illness so he decided to try out Bill’s prototype android

Chapter 68: Recording

• He was cataloging life on the planet with industrial age technology because if the Others attack, life may not exist anymore on the planet in about a decade

Chapter 69: Wake

• Howard tested out the analog at Stephane’s wake and the Bobs discussed how it was a huge success
  • Bob decided to help out on the project

Chapter 70: Conversation

• Colonel Butterworth agreed to turn into a replicant for the war effort

Chapter 71: Charlie

• Bob finished the analog named Charlie and was able to walk him in the Deltans with Archimedes

Chapter 72: Battle

• There attack against the others species did a lot of damage but did not stop their path to wipe out the Delta Pav planet

Chapter 73: Collection

• They started to collect about 20,000 of the endangered Pav species by using a gas to knock them out then put them into stasis

Chapter 74: Observing the Process

• They had to witness the other species were about half a billion to a billion species on the planet and they were deciding what to do with the 20,000 people they saved 

Chapter 75: Reunion

Chapter 76: Funeral

Chapter 77: Completion

• The Pavs decided to choose the New World to colonize with the help of the bobs

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Closing thoughts:

I’m so glad that this book didn’t disappoint! I loved that this second installment expanded the universe and continued the story of the Bob’s trying to save humanity while also trying to fend off the threat of the Others.

One interesting concept I believe that they touched upon int his book was how you’d think that being an “immortal” replicant would be so liberating as now a person wouldn’t be bound by time and space. However, we see that this is the opposite of what happens to Bob. He and all of the other Bobs end up being almost like servants to the humans, devoting decades of their own lives to helping them from going extinct.

On that note, I do like how the Bob’s still hold on to their humanity as they desire to build an android that will allow them to have a human experience once again.

Highly recommend this book and this series for anyone who loves the sci-fi genre. But I guarantee that you’ll be committing yourself to all 4 books in this series because it’s so good.

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One Takeaway / Putting into practice:

I don’t really have a solid takeaway or “action item” from this book. But I will say that the part of Bob’s character I admire the most is how he’s true to his values of not abusing his power, despite how easily he could. He still devotes most of his efforts to helping people even though it hardly benefits him.

I guess I say I’d aspire to be like that. To remember to use my gifts and abilities to help others as much as I can, especially those who have no power to reciprocate.

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Nutshell:

Part 2 of the Bobiverse series. The legion of Bob’s not only have to deal with keeping the human race alive, but also fending off the looming danger of the Others, a parasitic alien species.

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Similar books:

• We Are Legion by Dennis Taylor
• Off to Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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Rating:

3.5/5

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