We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse book 1) by Dennis E. Taylor (book review)
Bob Johansson is a happy man. He’s about to sell his company for millions of dollars and he’s at his favourite Science Fiction convention with his friends and colleagues. No partner, but he’s getting over the break-up with ‘she who will not be named’ just fine and he prefers his own company anyway. Now he’s signed up to be cryogenically frozen after his death, just to keep the good times going. Little did he expect he was a couple science presentations and a brief nap away from using his new investment.
Bob wakes up to a future where he is a replicant, a mind in a computer, solely owned by the faith-based government that has taken over parts of the former USA. Most replicants go insane, not able to process the change. Bob does not go insane, he wants to see what mysterious mission they are training him for.
We are Bob. We are white men. We are written by a white man. That is my constant thought while reading this book. Bob is a Gary Stu, the male equivalent of a Mary Sue. Bob can do anything with very little consequence, as he can endlessly duplicate and back up his own consciousness. Bob does not have obstacles he has intriguing thought puzzles where he then goes on to succeed. Bob is going to go and save humanity after they’ve gone and destroyed the Earth. I hope everyone still alive is prepared to agree with Bob, since he holds all the cards and does not believe other opinions might be reasonable.
This series is very popular. The concepts are great. Are we still ourselves if we’re cryogenically frozen? How about if we’re uploaded into a computer system? Are the copies of the computer program that is us the same as us or are they separate individuals? The discussion on the nature of consciousness is weakened here by the fact that all people involved in the conversation are, in fact, Bob. We have one point of view from every character, with only minor blips of non-Bob’s throughout, which makes for a rather flat intellectual debate. The reader can’t know if Bob is still Bob in his uploaded form, as we have very little to compare it against and no one else’s perspective to draw from.
I’ve been told this series is funny. It didn’t make me laugh. Clearly, I’m not the target demographic. If you are interested in the project management of space exploration and survivor rescue from a dying Earth, give Bob a try. Perhaps you’ll get bonus points if you are over 30, a nerd and, preferably, male. I don’t know. I just know that I did not enjoy this book, and I won’t be going on to read the four sequels.
If you want some old school, but modern, men-in-space-but-not-quite-space-opera check out ‘Old Man’s War’ by John Scalzi or ‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir and give this one a miss.
LK Richardson
October 2025
(pub: Saga Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025. 320 page deluxe hardback. Price: $30.00 (US). ISBN 978-1-66822-157-0)
check out website: www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Are-Legion-(We-Are-Bob)/Dennis-E-Taylor/Bobiverse/9781668221570