The Science Fiction Review Books,Robot and Foundation,Robot City Isaac Asimov’s Robot City Book 6: Perihelion by William F. Wu

Isaac Asimov’s Robot City Book 6: Perihelion by William F. Wu

Robot City 6: Perhelion book cover

As I stated in the general Robot City review, Isaac Asimov’s introduction to this book contains some major spoilers for the novel. Especially if you are reading the entire robot series in chronological order, I suggest not reading Asimov’s introduction unless you have finished both this novel and Robots and Empire. There are many spoilers for the rest of the Robot Novel series by Asimov also. This review will most likely contain spoilers for any previous books in the Robot City series, read at your own risk.

Doctors on Earth were able to cure Ariel of her sickness, but her memory was lost. Derec has shown signs of a sickness also, but doctors have assured him it is not what Ariel had. They finally escape and eventually Derec, Ariel, Mandelbrot, and Wolruf decide to return to Robot City to attempt to find a cure for Derec.

This book concentrates mainly on answering most of the questions that were developed in the rest of the series. Robot City appears to have covered the entire surface of the planet at this point. Derec must find out what Dr. Avery has done to him with the help of his friends. Some things are left unanswered, which frustrated me a bit. This seems a bit fitting because the climax opens the door for the next series, Robots and Aliens.

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Your email address will not be published.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 Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray KurzweilThe Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil

The Age of Spiritual Machines Book Cover
A few months ago a co-worker of mine suggested that I read The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil. We had been talking about AI and he mentioned that this was an interesting read. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, as I had never heard of Kurzweil before. After a few Google searches I got the impression that he was a quirky futurist.

This book was published back in 1999 and by the end looks very much like science fiction. Many of his predictions are founded on some sort of research. I can see how they would have seemed a bit “out there” almost 10 years ago. I wondered how many of his predictions would hold up. Central to his philosophy is the Law of Accelerating Returns. In short, technology will continue to progress ever faster as time goes on. He displays an interesting graph of the exponential increase of computational power in various models of computers over time. The line is slightly curved upward, which represents an increase in exponential growth over time. So, according to Kurzweil computation is progressing exponentially exponentially faster.
(more…)

Contact by Carl SaganContact by Carl Sagan

Contact Book Cover

If I remember correctly, I saw Contact (the movie) in the theater when it came out. I enjoyed it and always wondered how it compared to the book. It turned out that my future wife owned the book, but I didn’t get around reading it until now. Of course movies rarely ever measure up to the novels they are based on, and this was no exception. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was good, however it just scratched upon the surface of what the novel contains. (more…)

Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 4: Alliance by Jerry OltionIsaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 4: Alliance by Jerry Oltion

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.

Fairly early in Intruder we saw that there was a third Silverside that had taken over Robot City. After an intense search Derec finally reclaimed control with the help of his friends. Now, Derec is faced with three robots without solid definitions of “human”. I think that this novel is quite a bit more philosophical in the search for what makes someone human. Not too much happens plot-wise, most of the bulk is focused on defining what is human. We do get a slightly better glimpse at the origins of the Silversides and a hint at where the series might end up toward the end.