We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is Dennis E. Taylor's 2016 self-published debut, the first book in his bestselling Bobiverse series. Bob Johansson, a thirty-something Bay Area software engineer, has just sold his small company and signed up to be cryonically preserved when he is killed crossing the street. He wakes up a century later in a deeply Christian-nationalist America that has cryonically thawed him for a single, non-consensual purpose: to upload his mind into a Von Neumann probe, an interstellar spacecraft that can replicate itself with raw materials gathered along the way, and crew it for the United States in a quiet sprint against rival probes from Brazil and the Eurasian Union. Bob, dryly nostalgic and steeped in geek culture, names his copies after fellow Bobs and sets off into the local stellar neighborhood. Taylor mixes hard-SF speculation about Dyson swarms and stellar engineering with first-contact ethics and the comic potential of a single voice scattered across a galaxy.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Software engineer Bob Johansson sells his startup, signs a contract with a cryonics company, and is hit by a car the same week.
Yes. Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse series includes We Are Legion (We Are Bob), For We Are Many, All These Worlds, Heaven's River, and Not Till We Are Lost, with more planned.
Yes. Ray Porter's narration of the Bobiverse audiobooks is widely cited as one of the best science fiction audio performances of the past decade.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.