SINGULARITY PART 2

A robot gains consciousness in Stewart’s interplanetary SF sequel.

For readers who missed Singularity Part 1: The Dale Chronicles (2023), the author provides a primer at the start of this installment before picking up the action on Mars in the year 2055. Roberta (short for Robotic-Perturbational-Arduino), an “advanced android,” is assisting a mission on the red planet; eight Earth astronauts were sent to set up a semipermanent settlement there, and six have died. Things have deteriorated on Earth, where a viral infection has caused all mammals to become sterile. As a result, Mission Control tell Roberta to surgically remove and cryogenically store the reproductive organs of the last two astronauts, when they die, and then eject their bodies into space. After doing so, Roberta must care for their two young daughters. When they return to Earth, she continues to serve as caretaker for the pair, who become known as the “Martian Girls”; meanwhile, she begins to experience emotions for the first time. Roberta learns to accept her feelings, has difficulties raising the human children, and forms new relationships with other robots on Earth, all of which result in some touching scenes. However, this tone doesn’t last long, as the plot barrels forward through several years and one catastrophe after another. After murderous attackers storm Megan’s high school prom, Roberta finds herself on the run before finding an anti-technology commune in the desert. This intriguing predicament, however, doesn’t last long either, as Roberta is soon thrown into a new adventure. There’s plenty of action, but the staging isn’t consistently engaging (“The spiders used their lasers to shoot the drones, but they were too fast to track. The drones could fly quicker and dart around faster than the spiders could target them”). To counteract this, Stewart often relies on onomatopoeia to spice things up (“BOOM! CRASH! The lights in the room flickered. SIZZLE BOOM!”). There are intriguing ideas introduced throughout, but they’re unfortunately left underdeveloped to make way for plot developments.

An often entertaining but overstuffed series entry.