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* ColonyShip: The bulk of Riker's plotline revolves around building colony ships [[spoiler:to evacuate the 15 million survivers of Earth's nuclear apocalypse.]]
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* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Inverted. Bob studies the Deltans' language and develops a translation program so he can talk with them.
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* MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop: Once [[spoiler:[[EndlessWinter Nuclear Winter]] starts to settle in on Earth]], Homer develops an orbital farming station that grows nothing but kudzu. It keeps the population fed, but people soon grow sick of eating nothing but kudzu.
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* NamingYourColonyWorld: When the Bobs first approach a new star system, they use the standard NumberedHomeworld approach. If the surveying Bob decides a world should be a colonization target, he renames it - usually using some sort of ShoutOut. Of particular note are the first habitable worlds Milo discovered - [[Franchise/StarTrek Vulcan and Romulus, of the Omicron[[superscript:2]] Eridani system]].
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* NamingYourColonyWorld: When the Bobs first approach a new star system, they use the standard NumberedHomeworld approach. If the surveying Bob decides a world should be a colonization target, he renames it - usually using some sort of ShoutOut. Of particular note are the first habitable worlds Milo discovered - [[Franchise/StarTrek Vulcan and Romulus, Romulus]], of the Omicron[[superscript:2]] Eridani system]].system.
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* MeaningfulRename: Every new Bob clone takes on a new first name to distinguish themselves from the other clones.
* MetalPoorPlanet: When Mario reaches the Beta Hydri system, he finds it completely devoid of metal - refined or otherwise. [[spoiler:The wreckage of an alien cargo vessel and the time necessary to deplete ''an entire solar system'' make it clear that an advanced alien species is responsible.]]
* MetalPoorPlanet: When Mario reaches the Beta Hydri system, he finds it completely devoid of metal - refined or otherwise. [[spoiler:The wreckage of an alien cargo vessel and the time necessary to deplete ''an entire solar system'' make it clear that an advanced alien species is responsible.]]
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* NamingYourColonyWorld: When the Bobs first approach a new star system, they use the standard NumberedHomeworld approach. If the surveying Bob decides a world should be a colonization target, he renames it - usually using some sort of ShoutOut. Of particular note are the first habitable worlds Milo discovered - [[Franchise/StarTrek Vulcan and Romulus, of the Omicron[[superscript:2]] Eridani system]].
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* ShoutOut: Virtually every name the Bobs come up with (either for themselves or their findings) is a pop culture reference.
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** [[Spoiler: A more conclusive example is found by Mario. A habitable planet sterilized completely with gamma rays and then strip mined.]]
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** [[Spoiler: [[spoiler: A more conclusive example is found by Mario. A habitable planet sterilized completely with gamma rays rays, and then strip mined.strip-mined.]]
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** [Spoiler: A more conclusive example is found by Mario. A habitable planet sterilized completely with gamma rays and then strip mined.]]
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** [Spoiler: [[Spoiler: A more conclusive example is found by Mario. A habitable planet sterilized completely with gamma rays and then strip mined.]]
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**[Spoiler: A more conclusive example is found by Mario. A habitable planet sterilized completely with gamma rays and then strip mined.]]
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''Literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''Literature/For we are Many'' ''Literature/ForWeAreMany'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''* Literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''* Literature/For ''Literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''* literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''* literature/For Literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". It’s also the first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''For ''* literature/For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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He wakes up a hundred and thirteen years later as a digital copy of the original Bob, one of five replicants made from different people, all made in the hopes that one will be able to pilot a Von Neumann probe. Despite some unexpected political turmoil, Bob manages to survive Earth and escape the Sol system intact, then begins creating more Bobs.
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He wakes up a hundred and thirteen years later as a digital copy of the original Bob, one of five replicants made from different people, all made in the hopes that one will be able to pilot a Von Neumann probe. Despite some unexpected political turmoil, Bob manages to survive Earth and escape the Sol system intact, then begins creating more Bobs.
Bobs. The Bobs then proceed to explore the galaxy, finding new worlds and life, find out what happened to earth while facing hostile probes and other threats.
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A second book in the Bobiverse (For We are Many) will be released on April 18th, 2017.
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A second book in the Bobiverse (For We are Many) will be released on April 18th, 2017.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel by Denis E. Taylor which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". The First book in the Bobiverse.
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel of some acclaim, written by Denis E. Taylor Taylor, which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?". The First book in It’s also the Bobiverse.
first entry into the Bobiverse; the upcoming sequels will be ''For we are Many'' and ''All the Worlds''.
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* RecursiveCreators: The Bobs are, technically, Von Neumann machines, even if intellect at the helm is human derived and could be described as only a program.
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* RecursiveCreators: The Bobs are, technically, Von Neumann machines, even if the intellect at the helm is human derived and could be described as only a program.
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* RecursiveCreators: The Bobs are, technically, Von Neumann machines, even if intellect at the helm is human derived and could be described as only a program.
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* {{Theocracy}}: America elected a hyper-religious president in 2036. In addition to his blatant religious agenda, he had no political skill whatsoever, breaking laws left and right to appoint his hyper-religious idiot friends to key positions, claiming God would sort it out. This, predictably, resulted in a horrific recession, and the next president elected was an atheist. That drove the religious right into a frenzy, and they launched a successful coup, replacing the United States with the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. By the time Bob is awoken, FAITH has dozens if not hundreds of factions fighting each other over dogma, and do far more damage to each other than their enemies. Bob manages to keep them satisfied long enough to escape in the probe.
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* {{Theocracy}}: TheTheocracy: America elected a hyper-religious president in 2036. In addition to his blatant religious agenda, he had no political skill whatsoever, breaking laws left and right to appoint his hyper-religious idiot friends to key positions, claiming God would sort it out. This, predictably, resulted in a horrific recession, and the next president elected was an atheist. That drove the religious right into a frenzy, and they launched a successful coup, replacing the United States with the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. By the time Bob is awoken, FAITH has dozens if not hundreds of factions fighting each other over dogma, and do far more damage to each other than their enemies. Bob manages to keep them satisfied long enough to escape in the probe.
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->''"All that's really missing is a good artificial intelligence to control the whole process. And that's the trick, isn't it? These types of blue-sky discussions always assume certain advances for a successful implementation. Unfortunately, A.I. is the bottleneck in this case. We're close with the replication and manufacturing processes, and we could probably build sufficiently effective ion drives if we had the budget. But we lack a way to provide enough intelligence for the probe to handle all the situations that it could face."''
-->-- '''Eduard Guijpers''', from the convention panel ''Designing a Von Neumann Probe''
-->-- '''Eduard Guijpers''', from the convention panel ''Designing a Von Neumann Probe''
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* AIIsACrapshoot: This is the main reason that the F.A.I.T.H. researchers (and likely other nations) would bring online multiple possible [=AIs=] (through BrainUploading) for a single project, as the chance of any new AI staying same was slim.
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* AIIsACrapshoot: This is the main reason that the F.A.I.T.H. researchers (and likely other nations) would bring online multiple possible [=AIs=] (through BrainUploading) for a single project, as the chance of any new AI staying same sane was slim.
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Fleshed out page.
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http://dennisetaylor.org/
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He wakes up a hundred and thirteen years later as a digital copy of the original Bob, one of five replicants made from different people, all made in the hopes that one will be able to pilot a Von Neumann probe. Despite some unexpected political turmoil, Bob manages to survive Earth and escape the Sol system intact, then begins creating more Bobs.
And then things get interesting.
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* AIIsACrapshoot: This is the main reason that the F.A.I.T.H. researchers (and likely other nations) would bring online multiple possible AI's (through BrainUploading) for a single project, as the chance of any new AI staying same was slim.
* Axecrazy: The Brazillian Probes.
* Apocalypsehow:
* BenevolentAI: The Bob clones.
* BrainUploading
* FirstContact: [[spoiler: Bob reaches out to the Deltans when he couldnt encourage them to move to one of the camps that had been abandoned by the previous generation.]]
* MadeASlave: The original reason that Bob's conciousness was downloaded from his cryofreezed head.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: There are a few Bobs that just can't be around others (such as Mario), as well as some odd companions who like to annoy eachother (Riker and Homer, Calvin and Goku).
* TrulySingleParent
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman
* Axecrazy: The Brazillian Probes.
* Apocalypsehow:
* BenevolentAI: The Bob clones.
* BrainUploading
* FirstContact: [[spoiler: Bob reaches out to the Deltans when he couldnt encourage them to move to one of the camps that had been abandoned by the previous generation.]]
* MadeASlave: The original reason that Bob's conciousness was downloaded from his cryofreezed head.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: There are a few Bobs that just can't be around others (such as Mario), as well as some odd companions who like to annoy eachother (Riker and Homer, Calvin and Goku).
* TrulySingleParent
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman
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* AcronymAndAbbreviationOverload: FAITH really likes acronyms, as a minor TakeThat to the current American government. SURGE, SUDDAR, HEAVEN... the list goes on. We never even learn what half of them are supposed to mean.
* AIIsACrapshoot: This is the main reason that the F.A.I.T.H. researchers (and likely other nations) would bring online multiple possible
*
* ApocalypseHow: [[spoiler:When the Brazilians fired on the HEAVEN-1, this started a war. Every nation got involved, and China eventually destroyed Brazil by dropping asteroids on them. Riker and Homer arrive just as the last Brazilian warships are preparing to drop asteroids on what's left of China, which would render the Earth uninhabitable in weeks instead of decades. Once the warships are dealt with, Riker works to evacuate the fifteen million survivors, since it will take ten thousand years for Earth's biosphere to recover]].
* AxeCrazy: The
* Apocalypsehow:
* BenevolentAI: The Bob
*
** Traditional wisdom was to clone a replicant from an unimaginative mind, so that it wouldn't go insane from isolation and repetitive tasks. Bob is a new idea, an engineer and a programmer who is able to automate most tasks for maximum efficiency.
** Space stations are initially dismissed when trying to find a way to save the survivors on Earth, but Homer eventually realizes that [[spoiler:space farms are much more practical, due to a wider margin of error and fewer needs. They fill a few with kudzu and extend the life of the planet by decades]].
* BrainUploading: A living brain is destructively scanned, where it can be uploaded to a replicant core and activated. While the original is dead, the copy can be copied infinitely, and most nations on Earth use these copies to run important but boring tasks that are beyond lower-level [=AIs=].
* BulletTime: The Bobs can crank their frame rate up so high that milliseconds pass like minutes. They typically only do this in combat.
* CloneDegeneration: Not quite degeneration, but each Bob clone has different elements of Bob's core personality emphasized. Riker is pragmatic, Bill is a scientist, Milo is less cautious, and Mario is anti-social. Their clones continue to be variants of the original Bob; Riker's clone Homer, for example, has a big sense of humor while Riker has practically none.
* EmotionSuppression: Since most strong emotions come from glands, which are simulated for the replicants anyway, replicants are fitted with an endocrine suppressor program to keep them from feeling much more than "deep concern." Bob removes it soon after he leaves Sol, but turns it back on for battles.
* EternalEnglish: Averted, but oddly so; 2149 English is nearly incomprehensible to Bob and modern readers. It's implied that FAITH deliberately modified the language in an attempt to limit seditious ideas, but no detail is given.
* ExplosiveLeash: FAITH puts a killswitch in Bob's code, in addition to a physical bomb. Bob chucks the bomb first chance he gets, then spends a few years getting rid of all the killswitches and loyalty triggers hidden in his code.
* FirstContact: [[spoiler: Bob reaches out to the Deltans when he
* HumanoidAliens: Several chapter epigraphs discuss panspermia, the idea that DNA and RNA developed in space and spread to multiple planets. This theory seems to bear out when Bob [[spoiler:finds the Deltas, a mostly-human species in the Delta Eridani system]].
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** FAITH declared that all frozen humans were dead and immediately sold them for profit. Bob points out that it would have made more sense from their perspective to give them proper burials, and Dr. Landers wryly notes that hyper-religious nutjobs are rarely consistent.
** A Brazilian Empire gunship fires a missile at HEAVEN-1, and FAITH blows it up. The Brazilians claim that destroying their gunship is an act of war.
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: The Brazilian probes use explosive missiles, but Bob is worried about the substances exploding when built with his 3D printers. He considers using lasers, but dismisses them as inefficient due to power constraints, so he goes with guided non-explosive missiles called "busters" instead. They work by suicidally ramming the target at high speed.
* MadeASlave: The original reason that Bob's
* ModernStasis: While both technology and culture have advanced, Bob is surprised at how little. The technological advancements are purely practical, to the point that no one seems to care about the physics-breaking subspace except as a basic method of propulsion. Some of Bob's basic programming skills are seen as incredible by the scientists working with him.
* MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness: Pretty hard, but the use of subspace and digital clones keeps it from being diamond hard.
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: There are a few Bobs that just can't be around others (such as Mario), as well as some odd companions who like to annoy
*
*
* SelfDuplication: The point of a Von Neumann probe is that it can make more of itself to spread across the galaxy. Bob hesitates before making his first batch, but soon has no choice but to go through with it. Each new clone has a slightly different part of the original Bob's personality emphasized, and chooses a new name for himself.
* SubspaceAnsible: In theory, the subspace technology could be used for this purpose, though the people of Earth haven't bothered to look into it. Bill decides to stay behind in Epsilon Eridani to work on it. [[spoiler:He manages to invent an instant subspace radio with a range of twenty-five light years, but unfortunately it needs a working transponder on both ends to work. He sends off plans for the first version to the other Bobs as soon as possible, but by the end of the book only Riker's group has received the plans and built a relay]].
* {{Theocracy}}: America elected a hyper-religious president in 2036. In addition to his blatant religious agenda, he had no political skill whatsoever, breaking laws left and right to appoint his hyper-religious idiot friends to key positions, claiming God would sort it out. This, predictably, resulted in a horrific recession, and the next president elected was an atheist. That drove the religious right into a frenzy, and they launched a successful coup, replacing the United States with the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. By the time Bob is awoken, FAITH has dozens if not hundreds of factions fighting each other over dogma, and do far more damage to each other than their enemies. Bob manages to keep them satisfied long enough to escape in the probe.
* TimeDilation: Since the SURGE drive allows ships to move at near-light speed, time dilation is common. Furthermore, the Bobs can adjust their frame rate so that years pass like days. Some of them have different opinions on using it--Riker stubbornly sticks to real time unless absolutely necessary, while Homer is happy to adjust his frame rate to meet his needs from moment to moment.
* TranslatorMicrobes: After Bob's first encounter with bizarre 2149 English, he starts running a translator at all times when talking to them.
* TrulySingleParent: Each new Bob is a copy of one of the Bobs that came before, making father/son and brotherly relationships obvious. The Bobs still notably avoid referring to each other that way, though.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Calvin and Goku, two second-generation clones, are complete opposites and metaphorically snipe at each other all the time, while threatening to ''literally'' snipe at each other. They're also inseparable, and insisted on going to Alpha Centauri together.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: FAITH views replicants as simply machines that they own, to be controlled or disposed of as they fit. Other nations appear to think similarly, but we don't get much detail.
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* Axecrazy: The Brazillian Probes.
* Apocalypsehow:
* Apocalypsehow:
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* AIIsACrapshoot: This is the main reason that the F.A.I.T.H. researchers (and likely other nations) would bring online multiple possible AI's (through BrainUploading) for a single project, as the chance of any new AI staying same was slim.
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* FirstContact: [[spoiler: Bob reaches out to the Deltans when he couldnt encourage them to move to one of the camps that had been abandoned by the previous generation.]]
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* MadeASlave: The original reason that Bob's conciousness was downloaded from his cryofreezed head.
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* OtherMeAnnoysMe: There are a few Bobs that just can't be around others (such as Mario), as well as some odd companions who like to annoy eachother (Riker and Homer, Calvin and Goku).
* TrulySingleParent
* TrulySingleParent
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel by Denis E. Taylor which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?".
http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/
http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel by Denis E. Taylor which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?".
Probe?". The First book in the Bobiverse.
http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/org/
http://dennisetaylor.
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*BrainUploading
*WhatMeasureIsANonHuman
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*BrainUploading
*WhatMeasureIsANonHuman
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We are Legion (We Are Bob) is a 2016 Science Fiction novel by Denis E. Taylor which asks the question "What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?".
http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/
http://dennisetaylor.org/legion/
