Todd Mcaulty

This is a big book, almost 700 pages. I took it out of the library almost 6 months ago but because no-one else in Winnipeg had placed a hold on it I kept renewing it. Now I had to read it because the Winnipeg Public Library system only allows 5 renewals even though no one else is wanting it. And I can't figure out why I waited so long. It really didn't take me that long to read it. There's enough action and derring-do to keep the reader turning pages so don't let the size of the book put you off.

The world of 2083 isn't all that much different from the world of 2021 except that robots are sentient and able to reproduce. Many of them have taken over governing countries sometimes by force but sometimes by invitation. In the United States a recent invasion by robots has divided the country into three zones: the Free Zone with an elected human president, the Union of Post-American States with an appointed human as head of a corporate syndicate and the occupied states administered by a machine cabal but with plenty of humans in top posts. Barry Simcoe is a Canadian who runs a tech company. He has come to Chicago which is in the occupied states because the access to internet and other communications is supposed to be better than most other places on the North American continent. He finds that the reality is something less than the promise but then he doesn't really have much time to devote to business since he is trying to save people and machines and dogs and avert a pandemic and hide from a number of machines and people that he has angered. And, occasionally, he tries to woo a lady as well. It's highly unbelievable that one guy can pull off the feats he does but it is good fun. The ending makes it probable that there will be a sequel; I hope so and I promise it won't take me as long to read it when I do.

I just have to mention the dog. I'm a sucker for stories involving dogs so when Barry and his robot friend Black Winter go to an abandoned building looking for a co-worker of Black Winter's and they hear a dog in distress I almost cheered. The dog was left behind when it's owners were evacuated from Chicago and it is almost dead from malnutrition and thirst. Barry and Black Winter manage to evade a killer drone, find the body of Black Winter's colleague and save the dog. Not a bad night's work.… (més)

Wearing aluminum hats won't help us anymore. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's assistant likely conspire against humanity, and no doubt will copulate and have gendered, machine children. It's one vision of the future.

The Robots of Gotham novel will at least make our journey toward machine domination more fun. Todd McAulty's first-person style is profoundly easy to consume. Highly recommended for everyone who has a smartphone!

Todd McAulty's The Robots of Gotham has already received great praise from Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, the Toronto Star, Kirkus Reviews, and numerous authors. Here is another.

What is the best way to deal with being constantly surveilled by devices? Being controlled by them? Wearing aluminum hats won't help us (put that smartphone down!), but reading well-crafted fiction allows the journey toward robot domination to be more fun... less scary.

Artificial Intelligence: I am by no means an expert in artificial intelligence, which makes my perspective even more alarming (exciting?); many readers likely share this history, and it is why you'll enjoy Todd McAulty's The Robots from Gotham.

As a teenager (1980's), I had the experience of interacting with Apple IIe and TI94 computers (when data was never stored on disk or was saved to tape) which had users game with a computer that served as a dungeon master. Digitized, text-based adventures like Zork from Infocom/Activision provided a surreal version of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. As a chemist for decades who chills with engineers, I've witnessed computers grow from being calculators to devices that measure, store, analyze and report data with limited human intervention.

Currently (2019) there are powerful, open-sourced codes for Deep Learning and Neural Network tasks & decision making--the accessibility and power of enabling AI is skyrocketing. Couple that with the proliferation of smartphones & the-internet-of-things and the once "speculative" concept of Batman using phones to echolocate & virtually surveil a city is near reality (from the 2008 movie The Dark Knight). I confess that in 2008 I thought echolocation was a silly concept, but not anymore.

Can you imagine life with machines in 2083? Fast forward another six decades, and there is a strong likelihood we humans will be dialoguing with robots as if they are independent, sentient things (cheers to any offspring of Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assitant). Robots will serve many functions beyond soldier or policeman (Terminator or Robocop) including politics.

Todd McAulty, himself an excerpt in machine learning whose roots came from managing at the start-up that created Internet Explorer, provides us with a compelling vision. For over a decade he created this wonderful thriller, employing protagonist Barry Simcoe to narrate his exploits as a businessman wrapped up in a dystopic war between humans & robots (and robots vs. robots, and humans vs. humans, etc.). Robots have evolved into many classes, many are very "human." Listen in now to Barry as he summarizes his lunch date with the robot Black Winter:

"I really enjoyed our lunch. Yeah, it was a bit awkward at first. Machines don't actually eat lunch, for one thing. But before long we were chatting like old friends.

It's tough to explain why I find Black Winter so fascinating. It's not just the novelty of talking casually to a high-end machine. I've met plenty of machines, although admittedly few of them socially. Black Winter is different. He jokes that it's because he was trained in human diplomancy, but it goes deeper than that. There is something about him. There's a sincerity to him that makes him profoundly easy to talk to."

Profoundly easy to read: Actually, McAulty's writing style is similar to talking to Black Winter. McAulty's first-person chapters are present-tense blog posts that are profoundly easy to consume. This 670page novel was easier to read than most 200page, third-person narratives. Each chapter/post is sponsored by hilarious entrepreneurs too, but these details are easy to overlook since you will jump right into the text.

"CanadaNET1 Encrypted, Sponsored by Hot Pupil.
Are they checking you out? Hot Pupil monitors nearby skin temperature and pupil contraction for signs of lust. Dont' be the last to know.... 100% Accurate" - The Robots of Gotham, chapter XXVI

The first chapter starts with a literal blast and each successive post propels the thrill ride. Why are Venezuelan military forces occupying Chicago? Is Barry being followed? What the hell happened to America? Well, no spoilers here, but we can quote from the one other blog poster beside Barry, a machine journalist called Paul the Pirate, who puts all the madness into context:

"Will any of these three [various sentient entities] -- or their shadowy allies around the world -- be brought to justice for what they've done?
Don't hold your breath. Ain't nothing changed, my fiend. Civilization on this planet has been one continuous 30,000-year saga of the rich shitting on the poor, and the new era of the Machine Gods is no different. It's not personal. It's simply about power. You got it, they'll take it from you. Period."

Title and cover: I do not have any misgiving with the The Robots of Gotham story, but I am a little perplexed on the title. Granted there are many robots present everywhere, but only a select few hail from New York (i.e., Gotham). Also, a lot of awesome, robot history transpires in New York, but not any more than several other locations across the globe. This book is really about Chicago. In fact, the cover image features the Lake Michigan skyline (not Manhattan). So there is some dissonance here. Etymologically from Old English, "Gotham" means "home of goats," but there are no goats here either. Ironically, by calling out the Dark Knight movie above, I am accidentally furthering a weak connection between this novel and Gotham.

Is Bary Simcoe a virtual avatar of Todd McAulty? Barry Simcoe is Canadian, works in Chicago, works in the machine learning field, and is an expert blogger. So is Todd McAulty. But who is he really? Well, it is a fun mystery to unravel, one which author Howard Andrew Jones tackles (check out his blog).

More McAulty: The Robots of Gotham is a debut novel and is entirely self-contained. However, the history and characters presented are so fleshed out, that it screams for more. Thankfully there is. According to an interview on The Qwillery (June 20th, 2018), a sequel is in the works called: The Ghosts of Navy Pier.… (més)

I liked the book a lot but it's got some issues that prevented me from giving it 5 stars.

For one thing, I think it's too long. Some of the mind-numbing detail of the action sequences could have been eliminated.

The main character, Barry Simcoe is a bit too perfect. He's more like a superhero than a Canadian businessman caught up in the war for Chicago. But this is not a serious criticism. The story is told in a tongue-in-cheek manner so the Simcoe character fits right in.

There could have been at least one other character fleshed out a bit more. I'd have picked Mac, the woman real estate broker, who seems to be as resourceful as Simcoe, but doesn't have enough to do in the story.

One last complaint. The story is told as a series of blog posts, mostly in 1st person by Simcoe. Since the posts would have naturally have been written after the fact (and are actually dated after the events), I never had the sense that Simcoe was in any real danger. Perhaps that's the problem with any 1st person narrative.

On the plus side, the world of 2083 is vividly brought to life. Most of the world's countries are ruled by "Sovereign Intelligences", artificial intelligent machines, and fascists to boot. Then there are a raft of less intelligent machines roaming around, which humans (or at least Simcoe) are comfortable interacting with. The US has been attacked by a coalition of machine ruled countries (led by Venezuela) and is split into three sections, one controlled by the coalition (the northeast and upper midwest), one controlled by a break-away group and the rest, mostly the south and west by the US.

Simcoe is staying at a Chicago luxury hotel trying to arrange new business for his Canadian telecom company when the hotel is attacked by a rouge US military robot. He escapes and in the process makes friends with a Russian medic (working for the occupying peace-keeping force) and a robot named Black Winter. The three of them discover a plot by some of the ruling machines to wipe out humanity, thus leading to heroics by Simcoe and to a lesser extant, the Russian. Black Winter is another character that isn't given enough to do.

The book ends with a conclusion which works but story of these characters is sure not over. I'll gladly read the sequel.… (més)