Doomsday Blog: Robopocalypse (2011) novel

Here we go again: robots (intelligent machines) revolt and begin the extermination of humanity. Haven’t we had one too many doomsday movies on this theme already? I guess if its a meme, a formula and it works, why not.

Daniel H. Wilson gives his novel Robopocalypse an authentic touch since he has a PhD in robotics from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and had previously publish a non-fiction guide called How to Survive a Robot Uprising, possibly modeled on Max Brooks’ 2003 handbook The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

 According to this report from The National Post,

The story is set no more than a decade in the future, and at the centre of it all is Archos, a powerful artificial intelligence that orchestrates the entire uprising from the depths of a radioactive cavern in Alaska. The novel begins after the war is over, when a leader of the human resistance discovers a black box on the war, filled with accounts of the various heroes. The transcripts of these stories take us back to the pre-war world, and then lay out the uprising as it unfolded.

Someone named Steven Spielberg even optioned the movie rights before Dr. Wilson had completed it.

If all this sounds very familiar, just watch the four Terminator or the Matrix trilogy movies. You might also want to dig up Colossus: The Forbin Project, a 1970 movie, that is also eerily similar to Robopocalypse.