The Science Fiction Review Books,Robot and Foundation,Robots and Aliens Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 6: Humanity by Jerry Oltion

Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 6: Humanity by Jerry Oltion

Robots and Aliens Volume 3 book cover

This review will most likely contain spoilers for any previous books in the series, read at your own risk.

Humanity starts out with a very brief, and rather insufficient, summary of the events of the series. Derec, Ariel, Mandelbrot, Wolruf, Dr. Avery, and the three learning robots are on their way back to the original robot city. They are in for a big surprise when they enter orbit. As with previous books in this series we get to see a good portion of action, as well as discussion about what is meant to be human.

We do get to see how the whole series is tied together. For my taste, it seems that everything fits together a bit too nicely. Also, I was expecting a bit more closure toward the end. I was left with the feeling that yet another series or at least novel should fill in the gap between this series and the Tiedemann Trilogy (Mirage, Chimera, Aurora) which involves both Derec and Ariel. I’ll discuss this in more detail in my general Robots and Aliens review which will follow as I can’t do this without major spoilers for this last novel.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove you are a human * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Post

The Martian by Andy Weir narrated by R.C. BrayThe Martian by Andy Weir narrated by R.C. Bray

Book Cover

When I was looking for what to spend some of my first Audible credits on, The Martian by Andy Weir stood out. This still ranks at the top of roughly 15 audiobooks I’ve listened to for two reasons. First, the story and writing was engaging. This was “hardest” sci-fi I’ve read so far. There is a lot of math, chemistry, physics, and botany (yes botany). I’m sure that many people would be put off by such dry and detailed descriptions, but that leads me to my second point. The performance of the narrator, R.C. Bray, was superb. He made the “hard science” interesting and entertaining. His voice strikes me as a perfect fit for the main character, Mark Watney. Do yourself a favor and listen to the 5 minute sample on Audible and judge for yourself. While the book focuses on his Watney’s mission log, R.C. Bray does voices for other characters in NASA back on Earth. The voices are OK, nothing but nothing spectacular. I can’t say there is anything wrong, but there are other narrators with a stronger skill for differing character voices. (more…)

Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 3: Intruder by Robert ThurstonIsaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 3: Intruder by Robert Thurston

Robots and Aliens Volume 2 book cover

This review will most likely contain spoilers for any previous books in the series, read at your own risk.

Sometime after the end of Renegade, Derec has developed some problems using his chemfets to control Robot City. Derec, Ariel, Mandelbrot, Wolruf are on their way back to Robot City along with Adam & Eve (the changelings now referred to as Silversides). This book reminds me most of “Prodigy” from the Robot City series where we saw creative drives evolve in the robots. This volume is definitely more interesting than Renegade in my opinion. Amazingly, quite a bit of the main story plot is developed and we see some more information as to the purpose of the Silversides and their quest to define what is truly “human”.

Arthur C. Clarke dies at age 90Arthur C. Clarke dies at age 90

Arthur C. Clarke died early this morning after a long battle with post-polio syndrome. The New York Times has an interesting summary of his life and major accomplishments. I’m ashamed to say that I still haven’t read 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it is on my ever expanding reading list. Hopefully I can review it some time in the near future. Clark is well known for his laws of prediction, which are as follows:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.