Jacey Bedford's Journal

Narrated by Ray Porter

Original Bob goes in search of Bender, one of his early clones who set off to explore the galaxy more than a hundred years ago, and was never heard from again. He organises an expedition which tracks Bender down to Heaven’s River, a huge artificially constructed world, a topopolis, populated by an aggressive sentient beaver-like people. In the meantime the Bobiverse is in trouble. Bob’s clone descendants are down to the 24^th generation and there’s replicant drift. Civil War is brewing. The new generations of Bobs have plans of their own, especially the Trekkie-like faction that wants the Bobs to follow the prime directive (which doesn’t actually exist except for on an old TV show) and to stay separate from humanity and other biologicals. I love the Bobiverse books for their snarky humour, fannish references (Douglas Adams, Star Trek, Star Wars etc.) and interesting concepts. The stories are greatly enhanced by Ray Porter’s narration. There’s another Bobiverse book in production, but this is the last in the series for now.

I seem to have become a Dennis E. Taylor fan judging by the number of his audiobooks I’ve listened to, ably read by Ray Porter. The combination of Taylor’s literary voice and Porter’s reading is a winner. Porter brings out the quirkiness in Taylor’s stories. This is a standalone in which Jack, driving his father’s delivery truck, accidentally hits an invisible alien and kills him. On discovering that the thing he hit was seven feet tall and furry, Jack goes back to the scene of the accident and finds an invisible alien flying saucer that’s bigger on the inside. Together with his two friends they discover that the ship has a self-aware AI whom they name Sheldon, and then discover that there’s an plot by a different species of alien to take over Earth on a thin pretext of stepping in for humanity’s own good. A thoroughly enjoyable listen via Audible.

Audiobook, read by Ray Porter.

The students we first met in Outland are busy trying to make their new colony work on alternate Earth after the Yellowstone supervolcano has all but destroyed our own, but life in Rivendell is getting complicated, especially when a bunch of older refugees think that their age entitles them to run the place.  There are moral dilemmas and hard decisions. Bill and Kevin continue to explore a variety of alternate Earths, including some inhabitable and others decidedly not - including one still occupied by dinosaurs. I'm a sucker for society-building novels, so I loved this. I hope it's not the ;last one in the series. The reader is Ray Porter who reads Taylor's Bobiverse book. He does an excellent job.

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.