2 of 5 Puny Human Stars – The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer
The only people I cared about in this book were not people. They were machines. Robots. Toasters. Whatever. The people in this book, the actual human characters suck donkey balls. I mean they’re just so bad. But the robots… Oh my god. Love ’em. They’re articulate and intelligent. They have more feeling than any of the stupid humans running them.
This is the story of a war. A war fought mostly by robots. A war that would have been won, had the dumbfucks just let the robots do what they wanted, and whoop some motherfucking ass. But nooo.
Instead, we’ve got some idiot rednecks running these robots, and they don’t know what the bloody fuck they’re doing. And the robots even tell these guys “Hey man, we should really kill those guys over there. They’re totally going to destroy us if you keep fucking around.”
But the dumbfuck rednecks are too goddamn stupid to listen to the robots. “Fuck that thar robot. He ain’t no nothin’ ’bout na gadnumb war fightin’.” That’s how these rednecks talk in this book. And it’s annoying as fuck.
I’m still glad I read this book. The robots are fascinating. They have real intelligence, and even feelings. They get sad when their fellow robots get destroyed. They actually fear their own demise.
The problem is, that’s like 5% of this book. The rest is utter garbage. I really wish this had just been a short story about robots. Unfortunately, the robot bits are strewn within this pile of rubbish. It makes me a sad robot.
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