Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor

I took far longer to enter the Bobiverse than I should have. I had heard from many people it was entertaining and smart science fiction, but it was an author I didn’t know and sometimes I fall in the trap of wanting the familiar. I assumed from the name of the first book, “We Are Legion [We Are Bob]” that it was primarily a comedy, and while my favorite science fiction book is “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” I’ve read very few other books in any genre that work as comedy and most of the time science fiction comedy is worse than others. The Bobiverse books are funny, but that isn’t their primary point, and that choice elevates both the books and the humor. Heaven’s River is in some ways less funny than the others because things that made me laugh in the first book have just become the way it is done, and that is fine because it's a well written book with humor that adds to the book rather than being the point.

The Story of the Bobiverse so far

In case you have read none of the Bobiverse books, I’ll give you a simple overview while avoiding spoiling more than I have to. Bob Johansson is a wealthy man who uses the wealth he got selling his software company to have his head frozen. A hundred years later, he wakes up to discover that he has been turned into the AI of a Von Neumann space probe. His job is to travel to other star systems, build infrastructure there, use that to make copies of himself and in doing so explore the galaxy.

Being an actual person, Bob has a few problems with this. The most basic is that traveling through space is immensely boring and being alone that long could drive him insane. Luckily he can create a VR environment which helps keep him sane. Among the other early issues is his general distaste of copying himself. He thinks of himself as a singular person and he resists the idea of becoming many.

By the second of the four book series, an event that is a much bigger spoiler happens. The humans who built him have started a war and destroyed nearly all of humanity. The same people have built their own probes, which intend to destroy Bob. To make things more complicated, Bob and his copies find other species. One which is only interested in eating other intelligent species, one that is about to be destroyed by the first and another primitive species that Bob interacts with and eventually becomes “The Bob” a deity.

The third book continues the wars while humanity rebuilds on new worlds while trying to deal with an enemy that wants to destroy and eat them all.

The story of Heaven’s River

The first three books in the Bobiverse series felt like a trilogy, and it felt as if the third book was meant to be the conclusion. Luckily for the fans, the book was popular enough that Dennis E. Taylor continued the story. With most of the real dangers worked out and the expanses of space open to almost anyone, the fourth book in the series had to create new risks.

It starts with a fairly simple quest. Bob, the original, has tried to figure out what happened to Bender, one of his copies that had gone missing a hundred years earlier. While tracking his path he discovers “Heaven’s River,” a station which is effectively a billion mile long tube inhabited by a sentient but primitive race of semi-aquatic mammals similar to badgers. He is also convinced they captured Bender, so he builds five androids of the species and searches for him by remote controlling the androids.

While disconnected from the other versions of himself things change in the Bobiverse as each copy of Bob becomes a little less like the original. It has finally reached the point where some of them actively disagree about how things should be done. There are the primary group which intend to continue to do things as they have always done which includes interacting and helping organics. There is a group that wants to build a super intelligent AI and there is a group that calls themselves “The Federation” who want to force a prime directive of noninterference on all the Bobiverse whether or not they like it.

The bulk of the story takes place in Heaven’s River as the four characters, and eventually Bob alone, search for Bender while getting sucked into the politics of the place. Someone is actively keeping the Quinlan from advancing, and there is a group that is actively fighting that control. Worse, both sides become interested in the members of the expedition after seeing them act in what could be consider superhuman (super-Quinlan) ways.

The politics of the rest of the universe descends in to the war you might expect from a species of sentient probes that are light years apart. They hack and take control of the auto-factories and communications of the others. This doesn’t turn out well for anyone as the humans decide they don’t really want anything to do with either side, but since the Federation which started the war, just wants them to be less involved with humans, they declare that it’s a victory. Meanwhile, on Heaven’s River the war has disrupted the ability for anyone except Bob himself, who is in the system, to control the android Quinlin but Hue one of the Bob’s who is obsessed with AI sends a copy of himself to the system to help.

Eventually they get Bender to where they entered the station, but the Quinlin are waiting and they are captured. Except, it turns out that Hue wanted to be captured because the Administrator who has been keeping the Quinlin’s tech low was an AI and Hue makes a deal to trade much of the Bob’s technology for that AI information. The AI agrees because his only function is to protect the Quinlin and being able to move them to other systems will ensure that they won’t go extinct. But not everyone is happy with Hue’s unilateral decision especially when it’s revealed that his group had largely orchestrated the war among the Bobs to get what they wanted. What makes that marginally more acceptable is that the war they caused was far less destructive than what the Federation had originally intended.

What I Liked about Heaven’s River

The Quinlin are an excellent alien race and having an entire book to explore them allowed Dennis E. Taylor to create something that is both like and unlike humanity. The Quinlin’s biology is different enough from humans it alters the way they see the world. They, for example, have a mating season. They are also very easy to make angry and can survive off the land of Heaven’s River easily, which makes it hard to create an underclass. If you push people too hard, they will walk away or riot. It’s the same reason that while the Administrator can control the Quinlin in many ways he’s not able to stop the rebellion. That things like their quick tempers are shown in both positive and negative ways is one sign of an excellently written alien race.

Beyond that, the politics in this story are interesting in part because everyone in the story has the same starting point in their understanding and it shows how even people who agree on a lot of things and think similarly can end up politically opposed when people force their choices onto others. I also like that while the conflict destroys both sides, it isn’t actually all that bad. They attack infrastructure not each other and are mostly civil even when they are violently disagreeing.

What I liked Less about Heaven’s River

This book would have been better if it was shorter. While I really enjoyed the Quinlin, the amount of towns that were visited and the amount of chases and fights was unnecessary and cutting them in half wouldn’t have removed much from the book. There was also a fair amount of time and effort put into setting up things that didn’t pay off in this book. That is good in that I want to read more books in this series, but it weakens this book a bit. Finally, it relies a bit heavily on the previous books. This isn’t a problem in the abstract, but I’ve read a lot of books since the last time I read anything in the Bobiverse, and a reminder of who or what characters, people and places were would have been helpful. But these are minor quibbles.

Conclusion

“Heaven’s River” by Denis E. Taylor felt to me like it could be the beginning of a much longer series of books, or at least another trilogy. It introduced new characters, new ideas, new philosophies, new conflicts and new Bobs, and I am already looking forward to the next book in this series. That said, this isn’t my favorite book in the series and I think it’s a book that will be improved when readers are more likely to go directly from the third book to this one and then continue on deeper into the series, because that would largely eliminate most of the minor negatives. That said, having a fourth excellent book is just another reason to read the books in the Bobiverse.