For We Are Many: Bobiverse, Book 2

Taylor, Dennis E. For We Are Many: Bobiverse, Book 2. Stevens Point, WI: Worldbuilers Press, 2017. Available in Kindle and as an unabridged audiobook from Audible, narrated by Ray Porter, released 18 April 2017, publisher: Audio Studios, 8 hrs and 58 mins.. Other books in the series: We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1 and All These Worlds: Bobiverse, Book 3.

Relevant here, Bob and the virtual clones of his computer program begin to deal seriously with issues of embodiment. Their existence as ships is a given and taken for granted. Of interest now is the attempt to transfer their consciousness to androids that can move on-planet and, eventually, among other embodied beings, such as humans. The first two "android" bodies are Bullwinkle and then Rocky, in that order: a creature like a moose and another like a very large flying squirrel. Later there is a significant humanoid android, "Manny," who links a virtual Bob with flesh-and-blood humans and indirectly helps prepare the way for replicating humans in the Bobiverse; there is also an android that allows a Bob-clone to live among human-ish aliens, in a sense returning to what is close to his remaining family among these alien "ephemerals." For this theme, note that one of the Bob clones falls in love with a human woman, a love that remains unrequited for obvious reasons the virtual man must learn painfully. The enemy Others are studied and contacted in this book; significantly, they are a hive species like the Borg of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with insectoid aspects. Since their first contact with humans was with a Chinese space probe, the Others speak Mandarin; in an older work, this detail would fit into a racist theme of the Chinese as "blue ants," rather than Yellow Peril, but the allusions on the Bobiverse are to late 20th-c. popular culture not mid-20th-c. propaganda.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 5f.Dec17