Robosoldiers: Thank You for Your Servos

Despite the punning subtitle, this anthology’s 13 impressive sci-fi shorts, assembled by Lawson (Walk Away), take on the future of military robotics with deadly seriousness. The contributors, including genre stalwarts David Drake and retired naval analyst Phillip E. Pournelle, offer alarmingly plausible speculation. “All Is One” by Doug Beason explores what would happen if an advanced artificial intelligence came to believe itself “better” than humans, and thus was qualified to ignore the chain of command. A creation threatening its creator also informs the most chilling entry, Richard Fox’s “Edge Case,” which sees an explosive expert tasked with defusing a bomb threatening the U.S. secretary of defense and his six-year-old grandson, aided by an Explosive Ordnance Response Robot, supposedly “the most perfect bomb-disposal system.” The standout is Martin E. Shoemaker’s “Today I Go Home,” in which a researcher comes across an abandoned, and possibly lonely, mechanical weapon that appears desperate to connect with a human. It’s smart, if disquieting, military SF. Readers interested in how Asimov’s Laws of Robotics might play out on the battlefield will be particularly fascinated. (June)