In October 2018, Taylor was added to the X-Prize Foundation Science Fiction Advisory Council as a "Visionary Storyteller". [15] This group of accomplished science fiction authors help advise the X-Prize team on envisioning the future. [16] [17] SCUT (Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver) plans reach Mulder at Eta Cassiopeiae, Mulder joins BobNet

Omnicidal Maniac: Refuses to negotiate or even co-exist with other sapient life, viewing them as either food to be consumed, pests to be eradicated, or both.Ray Porter's narration is good and brings the story to life. I hope to come across more books read by him.

A conflict on earth nearly destroys humanity in a nuclear war shortly after he departs earth, leaving Bob as not only the last hope to explore nearby space and expand human influence but as the last hope for the survival of the biological human race. Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction when he realizes that Riker knows where he is and is about to drop a buster on him.Undying Loyalty: Like Medeiros, he keeps fighting even after it's clear that the Brazilian Empire has lost. In his case, he's willing to render the entire Earth uninhabitable—killing numerous Brazilian survivors—to get the last blow against China, who killed Brazil. From there, Bob begins creating a virtual reality interface for himself, just to feel more human, as well as countless “copies” of his mind, using the powerful autofactories at his disposal to deploy more “Bobs” to other parts of the galaxy. A Brazilian Empire gunship fires a missile at HEAVEN-1, and FAITH blows it up. The Brazilians claim that destroying their gunship is an act of war.

Oort Cloud : A cloud of billions of asteroids that envelopes the solar system and which starts within Pluto's orbit and and extends to the end of the solar system. In these novels moving into an Oort Cloud from interstellar space is treated as entering a solar system.Axe-Crazy: He is very much of the "shoot first, ask questions never" mindset. It's not just that the Bobs are FAITH ships, either; he killed the USE probe without any signs of discussion. Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he’s a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent all life in the local sphere ending up as dinner.

All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate. All in all, every thing is amazing with just slight confusion towards the middle but that is overcome after some reflection or restarting some chapters. This is an easy science fiction listen and a perfect choice to those who begin their journey into science fiction reading escapism or those who simply want to relax with a good book. Taylor has been noted as one of many popular authors that debut their work in audio form rather than print to take advantage of the explosive growth of the audio medium. [2]

Finally, the ending felt a little abrupt–but then, it’s only the first installment in a series, so leaving the reader wanting more is really a good thing. There are certainly plenty of interesting themes here. It blew me away that almost two hundred years after Shatner first famously didn’t actually say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” people still knew Star Trek. Now that’s a franchise.” The Theocracy: America elected a hyper-religious president in 2036. In addition to his blatant religious agenda, he had no political skill whatsoever, breaking laws left and right to appoint his hyper-religious idiot friends to key positions, claiming God would sort it out. This, predictably, resulted in a horrific recession, and the next president elected was an atheist. That drove the religious right into a frenzy, and they launched a successful coup, replacing the United States with the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. By the time Bob is awoken, FAITH has dozens if not hundreds of factions fighting each other over dogma, and do far more damage to each other than their enemies. Bob manages to keep them satisfied long enough to escape in the probe. While I enjoy science fiction, I'm not a die-hard reader of it. I kept seeing this book pop up in my recommendations, and I kept ignoring it each time I read the publisher's summary. It seemed like a generic plot and nothing notable. I suspect the author of the publisher's summary only read the first few chapters, as they didn't really seem to know what the book was about. One of Riker's clones, built in Sol. He is significantly more negative than most of the other Bobs, which Riker finds annoying. But when the chips are down, he does a good job.