Review: A Robotic invasion has taken control of Manhattan, the United States is friendless and in tatters, Venezuelan war machines have taken over Chicago, and the list of countries not governed by AIs gets shorter every day. Hey. We saw all that coming. What we didn’t see coming was that when AIs rule the world, they’ll be just as good, bad, and ugly as the humans that went before them.
Todd McAulty’s debut novel explores a fragmented future where the world is just as divided up as ever, but AIs rule the land in very human ways. Some got themselves elected, some performed coup d’états, bloodless or otherwise, and some just bought the place out. AIs in humanoid bodies or full on war droid live side by side with humans as equals, though inevitably, some are more equal than others.
Barry Simcoe is a Canadian tech CEO who’s been tapped by a tech mogul to help plump up a company that does secure comms and find a buyer for it. Looking for investors, Barry finds himself in Venezualia occupied Chicago just when things there get interesting.
A rouge American war machine, human-piloted because America outlawed AIs, picks a fight in the street outside his hotel and Barry narrowly escapes being trampled as the Venezualian soldiers evacuate the hotel where both they and civilians like Barry are camped. Barry winds up being arrested for murder when he tries to save a soldiers life, and in the process winds up making friends of a robot emissary from the Kingdom of Manhatten, and the Russian doctor in charge of the occupation’s clinic.
Reading the novel I managed to misread Barry’s last name as Simone, which made me wonder if it was a reference to the 2002 movie. My mistake, but at the end of that film the title character, herself a computer simulation, decides to go into politics, foreshadowing the brave new world of Robots of Gotham.
From Publisher: A thrilling adventure in a world one step away from total subjugation by machines
After long years of war, the United States has sued for peace, yielding to a brutal coalition of nations ruled by fascist machines. One-quarter of the country is under foreign occupation. Manhattan has been annexed by a weird robot monarchy, and in Tennessee, a permanent peace is being delicately negotiated between the battered remnants of the U.S. government and an envoy of implacable machines.
Canadian businessman Barry Simcoe arrives in occupied Chicago days before his hotel is attacked by a rogue war machine. In the aftermath, he meets a dedicated Russian medic with the occupying army, and 19 Black Winter, a badly damaged robot. Together they stumble on a machine conspiracy to unleash a horrific plague—and learn that the fabled American resistance is not as extinct as everyone believes. Simcoe races against time to prevent the extermination of all life on the continent . . . and uncover a secret that America’s machine conquerors are desperate to keep hidden.
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