jacey | Booklog 2/2023: Dennis E Taylor: For We Are Many – Bobiverse #2

In the second Bobiverse book there are now many Bobs, cloned from the first, right down to the 8^th generation and growing. We follow a braided storyline of Bob intelligences out on their own, sentient spaceships seeking out human-habitable planets - but still in touch with each other. They all have different names and slightly different personalities., though Original Bob is still in the mix alongside Bill, Ryker and Howard. They are multiplying exponentially and choosing their own names (hence Loki and Thor as well). Original Bob has a first contact situation on his hands, an emerging non-human people with roughly stone-age technology. There’s one Bob on earth, trying to coordinated the exodus to the new worlds on Bob-printed ships (with Bob pilots). Another Bob is on one of the new colony worlds, rapidly falling in love with a human woman, which doesn’t seem likely to end well. There are terrorists trying to wipe out their own species, and then an even bigger threat. There’s a race of aliens destroying planets for resources and food and they are heading our way. The Bobs have to organise, invent and develop.It finishes rather abruptly, though not on a cliffhanger, but the third book looks as if it takes up exactly where this one leaves off. The Ray Porter narration is excellent.