All These Worlds (bobiverse, #3)

The third installment in the Bobiverse series continues the story of Bob Johansson, a 21st-century software engineer whose brain was scanned after death and uploaded into a self-replicating artificial intelligence. Over the preceding novels, Bob cloned himself into hundreds of copies, collectively known as "the Bobs," each piloting an interstellar vessel and connected through BobNet, a galaxy-spanning instantaneous communication network. The Bobs have been exploring star systems, establishing human colonies, and confronting the Others, an alien species that systematically exterminates all life on inhabited planets and strips them of metals. The novel follows multiple Bob clones across several decades and star systems as they prepare for a final confrontation with the Others, navigate political crises in human colonies, and reckon with what it means to be immortal, posthuman beings.

On the planet Eden in the Delta Eridani system, the original Bob inhabits an android body disguised as a Deltan, a Stone Age primate species he has secretly observed and aided for decades. Living in the village of Camelot under the name Robert, Bob hunts alongside his closest friends: Archimedes, the village's master flint-worker, and Archimedes' son Buster. Conflict with the neighboring village of Caerleon, led by an aggressive Deltan named Fred, escalates from ambushes of hunting parties to an assassination attempt on Bob and the kidnapping of Archimedes. Bob's investigation reveals the root cause: Caerleon's hunters lack the skill to craft quality tools, leaving them unable to feed themselves. Archimedes offers high-quality spearheads as a peace offering and trains apprentices from Caerleon, easing tensions between the villages. However, Archimedes never fully recovers from the beating he sustained during the kidnapping. His cough worsens over the years until Bob finds him dead one morning. Devastated, Bob places a camouflaged drone in Archimedes' grave, confirms to Buster that he is the Bawbe, the mythical watcher from the sky, and walks out of the village for the last time.

Howard, a Bob clone stationed at Omicron² Eridani, maintains a deep relationship with Bridget Brodeur, a human biologist, through an android body. Their partnership draws hostility from Bridget's eldest daughter Rosie, who considers Howard a machine, and from segments of the public who object to a replicant—a digital copy of a human mind—dating a human. When their ally Colonel George Butterworth dies by suicide after a diagnosis of incurable dementia, Howard reflects on the growing gulf between replicants and the mortal humans they have started calling ephemerals. Bridget dies suddenly of heart failure, but Howard discovers she secretly changed her will to authorize replication. Her children file legal challenges, and Rosie sabotages the stasis pod holding Bridget's body with a timed device. Bill, another Bob alerted by Howard's text during the court hearing, has already sent a drone to scan Bridget's brain. A judge upholds Bridget's wishes, and Howard replicates her. Bridget awakens in virtual reality as her 28-year-old self. Together they build a floating city in the atmosphere of the gas giant Odin and fly manta-ray-shaped androids through its clouds to study alien wildlife. Bridget reconciles with her son Howie, while Rosie emigrates to another planet rather than accept her mother's new existence.

Marcus, a Bob clone managing Poseidon, a colony world covered almost entirely by ocean, grows alarmed as the planet's Administrative Council refuses to hold elections, restricts citizens' movement, and surveils dissidents. Marcus unveils a secret 15-year project: flying cities lifted by SURGE coils, a propulsion technology repurposed as vertical-lift fans. The Council rejects the cities, but Marcus proceeds, using cargo drones to ferry willing citizens past security blockades. The Council retaliates by declaring city residents deserters, destroying Marcus's decoy vessel, and attacking multiple cities with missiles. The city of Thark is shot down, killing approximately 150 residents. Marcus orders cloaked busters, unmanned combat drones, to disable all Council ships and deploys roamers, mobile ground robots, to overwhelm security forces. Five of seven Council members are captured and sentenced to labor at the fish plant, the same punishment they had imposed on dissidents. Marcus arranges elections and transfers all systems to civilian control.

The Bobs simultaneously prepare for war with the Others. Bill, a Bob in Epsilon Eridani, secretly launches two clones, Daedalus and Icarus, on a decades-long mission to accelerate two planetary bodies to near light speed and hurl them into GL 877, the Others' home star. Mario, a Bob stationed near GL 877, reports that the Others have depopulated five additional planets, confirming their pattern of total extermination. Riker, the Bob managing Sol, detects signs that the Others' entire fleet has launched and builds 80,000 observation drones to monitor approaches to Earth. At 82 Eridani, a hostile Brazilian replicant probe named Medeiros ambushes and disables Mack, the local Bob, sparking a prolonged guerrilla war that ends when the Bobs cripple Medeiros's vessel and Medeiros self-destructs rather than allow capture.

Herschel and Neil, two junior Bob clones, discover an Others' cargo vessel derelict drifting out of the Delta Pavonis system. The vessel is 10 kilometers long and one kilometer in diameter, with hundreds of cargo bays arranged around a central corridor. They reactivate its alien power core, which uses a variation of the Casimir Effect rather than fusion, and surround it with mover plates, propulsion arrays capable of pushing massive objects through space. They name it the Bellerophon and propose flying it to Earth as the largest colony ship ever built, manufacturing stasis pods en route.

The crisis converges when Riker detects the Others' fleet approaching Sol: approximately 50 death asteroids and 100 cargo carriers. The Bobs have 500 crewed vessels, 1,000 AI-piloted dreadnoughts, 3,000 nuclear weapons, and 5,000 busters. Herschel and Neil arrive with 5 million stasis pods; combined with 3 million built at Earth, they remain 6 million short of the 14 million people still on the planet. Herschel proposes lowering the Bellerophon into Earth's atmosphere and loading the remaining people directly into its pressurized cargo bays as active passengers in zero gravity.

The Battle of Sol begins with cloaked fusion bombs detonating inside the Others' formation, destroying 10 death asteroids and 22 cargo carriers before the element of surprise is lost. The Others respond with super-pulses, massive energy scans that reveal every significant mass within light-hours. As battle devolves into attrition, Herschel lowers the vessel through the clouds and begins loading humanity across 10 pickup locations. One Others strike hits Cuba, killing approximately 150,000 people gathered for evacuation. Conditions aboard are grim, but all surviving humans are loaded.

As the Bobs are pushed back, Riker realizes that the Jokers, a high-speed attack squadron approaching at near light speed, will Doppler-shift radiation from their detonating nukes far above the frequency the Others' vessels can withstand. Close to 1,000 nukes detonate simultaneously, and the relativistic radiation cone sterilizes every Others ship in its path. All enemy action ceases. Separately, Daedalus and Icarus complete their mission: Two planetary bodies strike GL 877 at near light speed, triggering an explosion that sterilizes the entire system. The Others are extinct.

Jacques, a Bob overseeing a colony of 20,000 Pav, survivors of a civilization the Others nearly exterminated, informs Hazjiar, a Pav city councilor serving as the primary liaison, that the threat is over. The Bobs begin restoring the Pav homeworld's ecosystems from genetic samples.

At a post-war moot, a formal gathering of Bobs, Thor, a Bob clone, articulates a growing consensus: The Bobs are an independent species, Homo sideria, and will no longer automatically sacrifice themselves for humanity. Thor clarifies this is not a threat but a declaration of identity, and Bill agrees to draft a statement for the human colonies.

Bob visits Earth one final time. The planet is now a frozen snowball with glaciers closing on the equator. Standing over the buried site of Las Vegas, where his human life ended, Bob reflects on everyone he has lost and everything he has gained. He tells Bill and Riker, his two oldest friends, that he is done with commitments. He plans to head into the galaxy alone, building BobNet relay stations as he goes, exploring with no destination. From orbit, he turns on the drive and heads for the stars.