A young man has just sold his software company for a good amount of money. He used a part of his wealth to buy a deal for cryogenic preservation after his death. Very soon after that, while he is returning from a science fiction convention, he is run over by a car. He wakes in a future which is ruled by a theocratic dictature. The cold war between other current nations is on a brick of becoming hot. All his assets have been confiscated and, according to the current laws, he has no rights at all. He is offered a choice: he could be used as intelligence, used to run a project which needs high-class AI, or he could be terminated. Not much of a choice. It turns out that the job in question was running a Von Neumann probe which will be sent to the stars to find habitable planets. (there were supposed to be several probes, but due to budget constraints and political infighting, only one will be built - I wonder what would have been the point in building several _self-replicating_ probes anyway.) After a few problems, he is headed to space and starts to replicate after he arrives at another star. His copies are not exactly the same as the original, but mostly pretty close in personality to the original Bob.
A book which I read from my mobile phone during lunch breaks and occasional commutes in a bus. It was very suitable for such use - it was easy to read with straightforward language and an engaging and fun plot. It wasn’t any great literature, but sometimes it is fun to read something which doesn’t try to be anything but entertainment and is a kind of nerdish wish-fulfillment fantasy - being almost all powerful and exploring space and finding new planets and even lifeforms.
304 pp.
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