Eugenesis

by James Roberts

Cybertron, 2012, and the Autobots and Decepticons continue to slide towards mutually-assured destruction. As events gather speed and the casualties mount, they realise that to avoid extinction they must confront not just an enemy from the past, but the very past itself.

Allegiances are tested, myths are exposed and new faces replace old as the last surviving Cybertronians struggle to prevent the legendary Fifth Epoch. Along the way they will face ancient horrors, new adversaries and, at the heart of their faith, a shattering betrayal.

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

James Roberts is a British comic book writer best known for his contributions to the Transformers franchise.

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this back in high school (around the age of 15-16) right around the time when I started reading More Than Meets the Eye/Lost Light. It's been several years since I've read this book (I'm 22 and have graduated college since then), but this book still lives strong in my memory. This book is simultaneously one of the best of worst pieces of media I've even consumed. The writing was absolutely amazing the sheer horror and weirdness in this novel is unparalleled. I spent years trying to catch the same level of shock, horror and absolute hopelessness I achieved while reading this book. I've gone o to read most of Stephen King's work and even as far as to read Naked Lunch and most of William S. Burroughs's works; Nothing has ever compared to what I felt reading this. I would recommend this to everyone and no one at the same time. I truly feel that reading this changed my perspective of what literature could be. I will I was being overly poetic or dramatic about this but I mean all this in true honesty. I even plan on getting a tattoo inspired by this book within the next year.

Favorite parts? Everything with Quark and Rev-tone and that one chapter with Prowl (You absolutely know which one if you've read it).

[Desmond Killian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always going to bat for James Roberts' IDW Transformers saga, but I won't say that Eugenesis is a masterpiece. Released in 2001, about a decade before Roberts began writing official TF comics, Eugenesis is the ur-text where many of the concepts later explored in More Than Meets the Eye, Lost Light, and The Wreckers were initially conceived. Roberts was in his twenties when he wrote this and it's clear that he had a lot of growing up to do. Eugenesis can be an incredibly mean-spirited read at times with many of the characters dying senseless and gratuitously violent deaths. It's largely based on the TF UK comics and explores the 300 year gap between the G1 and Beast Wars cartoons. I can't recommend it to everybody, but, if you do read it, you'll at least understand what that caption on his TFWiki page means.

You can read Eugenesis and its epilogue Telefunken here: https://www.tfarchive.com/fandom/feat...