obota is the name of a world, a world that might be ours in the ancient past or a similar one across the galaxy far in the future. In either case, Robota was visited centuries ago by a cybernetic race called the Olm. The Olm found the world populated with humans possessed of a steam-age technology. The benevolent Olm made massive changes, seeding the world with their own kind, before they departed. A peaceful and productive alliance of robots and humans then reigned. But over the centuries, entropy and mismanagement have taken their toll. The humans have reverted to a preindustrial existence in a world populated with chimerical beasts such as the saurian jodphurs, relying on bio-sciences for whatever support they can derive. With their mysterious leader, Font Prime, silenced, the robots have fallen under the baneful influence of Kaantur-Set, who directs a program of human extermination. But the robots themselves are on the point of extinction, as their technologies of reproduction no longer work.
Into these dire end-times comes Caps, a human seemingly hatched full-grown but with partial amnesia out of an ancient teleporter device. Awaiting Caps is a sentient monkey-being named Rend, who hustles Caps away from the killer robots looking for him. Caps and Rend eventually hook up with Juomes, a kind of yeti-like creature who has devoted his life to the destruction of Font Prime. The trio are soon in flight from Kaantur-Set, and they arrive at a human city built in a forest of giant mushrooms. There, they add to their fellowship the human woman Beryl, who offers to guide them to Transept City, the home of Font Prime. Along the way, they pick up an anomalous robot friend, Elyseo, who represents a sect that will not harm humans.
Arriving covertly in Transept City, the five are unfortunately soon detected and hauled into the presence of Kaantur-Set. There, Caps learns the truth of his origins and what the robot usurper plans for humanity. A battle ensues from which not all of the five will emerge alive, and Caps finds himself again on the run—but this time armed with the powerful knowledge of his true self.
A myth from the far future
As Academy-award-winning artist Doug Chiang—best known for his work on the two Star Wars prequels—explains in his foreword, this book had its genesis in drawings he did as a teen and which he extensively conceptualized and elaborated on for the next 30 years. Having fleshed out the parameters of his imaginary universe, Chiang was stumped for a tale that would allow a cross-section of his universe to be explored, until inspiration struck one day. Afterwards, famed SF writer Orson Scott Card was enlisted to actually create the narrative. The result is a text that approaches a short novel in length, accompanied by scores of gorgeous paintings, from quarter-page size to double-page spreads, all presented in an oversized hardcover. Not many comparable works come to mind, except perhaps Urshurak (1979) by the Hildebrandt brothers.
Functioning as a private mythology for so long, Robota retains a little bit of hermetic reclusiveness. One senses the immense backstory in place, but it does not always register forcibly or extensively enough. For instance, the steam-age culture that first greeted the Olm and which appears in the prologue is important as the seedbed for what comes after, but it's rather a cipher. Likewise, what is possibly a rich society of the Jodphurs and the mushroom-city dwellers is rather scanted. Card does a good job of papering over the cracks, though, inserting enough historical tidbits to make the reader comfortable.
Focusing on the actual story, we encounter vivid characters and clean action, with sufficient plot twists to keep the reader hooked. But a choice has been made to represent the adventures of Caps as a legend narrated from his own future. This tactic has a distancing effect that renders the emotional resonance of the tale weak. Climactic death scenes come off as old news somehow. But otherwise, Card has fun with the Perils-of-Pauline aspects of his tale.
But it's Chiang's drawings that assume center stage. Reminiscent at varying times of the work of Frank Kelly Freas, Wayne Barlowe and John Schoenherr, yet marked with a style all their own, Chiang's accomplished paintings thrill the reader's eye and fancy, lending a tangibility to the locales and action. (Occasionally, Chiang will toss in some raw pencilwork that is equally commanding.) Moreover, there is a close harmony between text and art that is satisfying. Card has evidently taken pains to match his words to the visuals. A double-page spread such as that on pages 140-141, depicting robot warships striding across the ocean, is typically colorful. (Although I have to ask what the plumes of dirty smoke emerging from ultra-sophisticated machinery can possibly represent, in all logic.)
With a Tarzanesque hero in a Burroughsian world of wonders, Robota offers lots of fun, with some matter for ethical reflection as well.
