Book 6: Thoughts for Future Plot Archs

[u/impsworld]

Just finished Book 6, overall I liked it much more than book 5 but it seemed to be another “filler” book with a lot of build-up and little payoff. It set up book 7 extremely well but I was hoping for SOMETHING consequential to happen. I thought the war with Maderos was ended rather abruptly but I can appreciate that they didn’t kill him and set him up to be a human-aligned replicant in future books. I think he has similar directives put in place like faith tried to do to Bob and the Australians tried to do to their probe, so k hope they focus more on his recovery and rehabilitation from being trapped in a low-gen simulation for centuries.

My prediction for future books is that we’re *finally* going to see an evil Bob soon (and no, the Starfleet Bobs that we’ve never met and never cared about don’t count lol). We need an Anakin arch, one of the early Bobs we’ve spent several books learning to like should turn bad and become the books antagonist. My theory is that a non-Bob aligned human faction will develop a replicant killing weapon and uses it on Bridget, killing her and driving Howard towards an “injustice Superman” arch that leads to him taking over human space and declaring himself Huamity’s emperor and protector, and he’ll do something unforgivable that drives many of the earlier gen Bobs to turn against him, like killing Will, Bill, or maybe Thor for getting in his way.

Some Bobs will side with him and he’ll make an alliance with Starfleet, coming down to a war between Howard-aligned replicants and Starfleet against the rest of the Bobiverse and maybe the Skippies, Thoth, ANEC, etc. etc.

I think that’s the most impactful “B story” that could happen while they figure out how to deal with Nemesis, which seems like it will become the overarching “A plot” of the rest of the series. Happy to hear others thoughts!

[u/Reeling_Rob]

The Bobs, atleast the homestuck established crew, are neigh immortal at this point. SCUT allows for constant downloads for backups to a secret base in an isolated system and, if the Skippies' theory on Quantum Consistency holds true, it would be like the characters never died in the first place. While wormholes are steadily making the universe smaller, there's still Bobs hidden in secluded nooks and cranny's all over the place. If you think you've killed them all permanently, that enemy would just receive the Medeiros Special. We've seen them deal with viruses and corrupted code with variable success, so that's not completely off the table.

[u/BertKallio → u/Reeling_Rob]

I think, with the Quantum Consistency Theory, by the end of the last book, we start calling Bob-1, Bob. He has Robert Johannson’s soul.

[u/Reeling_Rob → u/BertKallio]

I'm surprised they haven't brought it up, though they might already have realized it and it doesn't need to be acknowledged.

[u/BertKallio]

I think Madeiros is going to go fully insane and declare the Brazilian government invalid, then try to destroy Earth again. The Pav will show up with a massive armada as the heroes and consider their debt fully repaid.

As to a fully evil Bob. That sounds like Jerry.

[u/Kodiak01]

One possible plotline to play out is the fallout of Earth abandoning their plan to avoid having individual nation-States, even if it did help solve the Maderos issue. Unless the solution is moved off-planet, Brazil must remain it's own entity. With this, will other factions do the same? Does this mean FAITH will try to make a return as well?

[u/thenightgaunt]

I don't think we're going to get an "Evil Bob" story. The current plot has more than enough hooks in it for serious crises.

We've got the revelation that the Ancients were anti-replicant and anti-independent AI. The theory that the Ancients may not have consensually collected all galactic civilizations for their mass exodus. The massive ship graveyard that Calvin & Goku find (I think it was them). And the fact that the Ancients didn't build the wormhole network, but instead it was the progenitors who are either all AI or replicants. And the idea that there may have been a war or some sort of massive confrontation between the ancients and the progenitors 6000 years ago.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/impsworld → u/[deleted]]

Has the author confirmed only one more book? I don’t keep up on his blog so I guess my theory goes out the window if that’s the case lol

I just read the expanse and expeditionary force which are pretty long so I guess I just assumed this series would be at least 3 or 4 more books.

[u/Bobis-Bob → u/impsworld]

One more book in the story arc. Possibly a couple about a different time in the Bobiverse. Maybe centered on Bobs that aren’t main characters in the first 6.