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Ariel follows her lover, Derec, to a planet of robots, where Derec is summoned to solve the mystery of the robots and aliens before a robot war erupts
178 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 8, 2020
Very interesting highly intelligent bat like aliens, and good robot interaction, slightly biblical but just a hint.
September 4, 2024
Those book shares the story of Ariel Welsh's point of view regarding servant robots. Ariel being raised with Robot nannies instead of her human mother explains how she sees these robots merely as servants and not sentient beings. That is the type of society she grew up in. Ariel knows the difference between an emotional relationship with a human versus with a robot. Do these lines ever get crossed? With Derec being on an entirely different planet Ariel does struggle with the need for emotional and potentially a physical connection with her Handsome humanoid Robot servant Jacob.
All the while the Aliens of Ariel's so-called Oyster World are erecting a dome around the entire planet which may encapsulate the entire world perhaps trapping Ariel forever. Potentially without Derec or any other humans
.....
There is a lot more to this book; There are the indigenous life forms on the planet which are highly intelligent. These life forms are sentient and speak with interesting accents with Ariel. They have a preexisting culture which may not have been ready for any other beings to visit their planet until, Ariel arrives with her Robot servant. Delegations then take place to eventually cause the inhabitants to rethink their entire way of life.
Wolruf and Derec arrive and assist with Ariel's plan to farm the planet.
Silverside's part of this book introduces a philosophical question again of What is a Human.
This encounter Silverside (The wild one) has with a rogue inhabitant on this planet does not help Silverside to clarify what mamal form is the actual human he has to serve.
Overall the story hoses a lot of questions about who these characters are, what their interactions with the different life forms, with each other and how their actions effect everyone else.
There is a lot packed into less than 150 pages. I personally could spend days finding out about each character.
I definitely recommend this book.
All the while the Aliens of Ariel's so-called Oyster World are erecting a dome around the entire planet which may encapsulate the entire world perhaps trapping Ariel forever. Potentially without Derec or any other humans
.....
There is a lot more to this book; There are the indigenous life forms on the planet which are highly intelligent. These life forms are sentient and speak with interesting accents with Ariel. They have a preexisting culture which may not have been ready for any other beings to visit their planet until, Ariel arrives with her Robot servant. Delegations then take place to eventually cause the inhabitants to rethink their entire way of life.
Wolruf and Derec arrive and assist with Ariel's plan to farm the planet.
Silverside's part of this book introduces a philosophical question again of What is a Human.
This encounter Silverside (The wild one) has with a rogue inhabitant on this planet does not help Silverside to clarify what mamal form is the actual human he has to serve.
Overall the story hoses a lot of questions about who these characters are, what their interactions with the different life forms, with each other and how their actions effect everyone else.
There is a lot packed into less than 150 pages. I personally could spend days finding out about each character.
I definitely recommend this book.
April 24, 2018
Emocionante...
December 24, 2018
5/10. Amparado en el nombre "Isaac Asimov" y en sus robots salieron unos libros que intentaban explotar el nombre del Gran Maestro. No valen mucho.
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November 17, 2020Not for me 😫 couldn’t get into it, wasn’t able to visualize the descriptions.
February 4, 2023
I personally had a problem getting into this book. it was ok just did not do much for me.
April 1, 2024
A weak and somewhat floppy attempt to leverage Asimov's approach around robots and mysteries.
April 8, 2015
Isaac Asimov's Robot City, Robots and Aliens book 2, Renegade (1989) 178 pages by Cordell Scotten.
Wendell Avery created a world full of robots on a planet with no humans [other than himself] and this became [the first] Robot City. Derec who turned out to be Avery's son, was infected with chemfets that allow him to communicate and control Robot City. As Derec was learning about robot city he was accompanied by Ariel Welsh, and a cananid alien called Wolruf.
Ariel is on Oyster world discovers a third robot city and a race of aliens called the Ceremyons. The Ceremyons are large flying black bodies that get their energy directly from solar radiation. The robot city on their planet is disturbing the weather patterns and the Ceremyons start building a compensator, a dome over the city that cuts it off from the rest of the world.
There are a lot of little back and forth swings as to whether the the humans can stay or will they be kicked off this world. The only argument that I heard from the human side was "We will minimize our impact on the environment."
There are a few chapters with the black bodies, their hierarchy and how they deal with each other, how they plan on dealing with the human/robot settlers. Mixed in with that we learn a little about their physical nature. Ariel starts dealing with the aliens. Well into the book Derec arrives on planet with Wolruf and the new robot introduced in the previous book. Mixed into the equation of dealing with the blackbodies is how to cope with the unpredictable nature of Adam Silverside who is searching for what or who to call human.
Not a masterpiece but not a stinker either. It had enough action and plot and character development to keep the story interesting.
Wendell Avery created a world full of robots on a planet with no humans [other than himself] and this became [the first] Robot City. Derec who turned out to be Avery's son, was infected with chemfets that allow him to communicate and control Robot City. As Derec was learning about robot city he was accompanied by Ariel Welsh, and a cananid alien called Wolruf.
Ariel is on Oyster world discovers a third robot city and a race of aliens called the Ceremyons. The Ceremyons are large flying black bodies that get their energy directly from solar radiation. The robot city on their planet is disturbing the weather patterns and the Ceremyons start building a compensator, a dome over the city that cuts it off from the rest of the world.
There are a lot of little back and forth swings as to whether the the humans can stay or will they be kicked off this world. The only argument that I heard from the human side was "We will minimize our impact on the environment."
There are a few chapters with the black bodies, their hierarchy and how they deal with each other, how they plan on dealing with the human/robot settlers. Mixed in with that we learn a little about their physical nature. Ariel starts dealing with the aliens. Well into the book Derec arrives on planet with Wolruf and the new robot introduced in the previous book. Mixed into the equation of dealing with the blackbodies is how to cope with the unpredictable nature of Adam Silverside who is searching for what or who to call human.
Not a masterpiece but not a stinker either. It had enough action and plot and character development to keep the story interesting.
September 12, 2012
The whole premise of this series is utterly pointless in my opinion. In the Robot City novels, Derec and Ariel didn't have a choice but to work with the robots in order to find a way off of the planet. In this series, the robots are building cities for no reason other than to placate an insane doctor, yet Derec and Ariel are helping them. There are no plans for any civilizations to settle these cities, so what is the point??
Aside from that, there wasn't a lot to like in this book. It started off with two characters with such similar names that I was confused as to who was who for several chapters.
The humaniform robot does nothing to the story except turn Ariel into a character that I completely loathe. Her sudden infatuation with him made no sense to me.
And finally, the SilverSide robots are completely stupid. For something that supposedly has so much higher intelligence than a standard robot, they do some really really dumb things.
I seriously hope that the final four books in the series will pick up but I'm not holding my breath at this point. At least they are short...
Aside from that, there wasn't a lot to like in this book. It started off with two characters with such similar names that I was confused as to who was who for several chapters.
The humaniform robot does nothing to the story except turn Ariel into a character that I completely loathe. Her sudden infatuation with him made no sense to me.
And finally, the SilverSide robots are completely stupid. For something that supposedly has so much higher intelligence than a standard robot, they do some really really dumb things.
I seriously hope that the final four books in the series will pick up but I'm not holding my breath at this point. At least they are short...
January 27, 2011
So far of the extended series this reads most like an Asimov novel--wordy passages of science overwhelming fiction that I wanted not to like on general principal but that was actually fascinating. Also shares Asimov's tendency toward stiff male/female relationships that extend into the socially retarded, and not really even in a cute, funny way. Still, crunchy space opera goodness.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews