icked this up at a used bookstore in Norfolk on my sister’s store credit (which I cleared out). The cover is interesting – a young boy and some sort of ratty tiger robot looking out over ruined skyscrapers. So when she asked if she could borrow it from me, I pretty much had to agree. But she only got about halfway through before dropping it (she drops easier than I do). “Wasn’t for me,” she explained.

So C. Robert Cargill’s novel, Zero Day, is a story about a young boy and his nanny robot that looks like a tiger, who suddenly find themselves in the robot apocalypse. There are a number of anti-robot efforts leading into this, and when the robots finally build their own city where they can live in peace, a church in bumfug Florida detonates a small home-built nuke in that city during the commencement speech. The government orders the population – via the emergency broadcast network – to immediately shut off their domestic and companion bots. And then someone else (I’m looking at you, supercomputers) sends all the robots a code that disables their Asimov chips (the do-not-kill-humans safeguard). And the robots, with resentments from decades of servitude, instantly turn on their masters and the slaughter starts. Of course, our robot hero “Pounce” loves his eight year old human Ezra and vows to safeguard him and get him to some sort of safety (somewhere). Tough to do since instantly most of the suburban humans have been murdered by their plastic friends.

The first part of the book was interesting. It was a steady decline towards civic madness (of the sort we fear we are experiencing now). In fact, talk about the typecasting (though truthful, I must admit). The bigoted humans who waylay and damage bots – they wear red hats. And Ezra’s parents – they are urban professionals who worry about woke things when action is needed – and drink way too much red wine. So maga and woke, right there. And with this, Ezra and Pounce doing a kinda Calvin and Hobbs deal. But still pretty good.

But the second part of the book broke down and dragged. They are trying to get out of the suburbs, and it seems they can only travel through subdivisions – no major roads, no strip malls, just nothing of suburbs blooded with corpses, all very striking but carried out way too much. Several times Pounce knows they are “being herded” and “walking into traps”, yet he gets herded and goes into traps and there are gunfights, shot-by-shot descriptions that really don’t advance the plot much. Here I think I found my sister’s bones (she left me a birthday card which I didn’t know about between pages about 2/3rds through). So yes, it fizzled down at the end.

Something I’ve always thought (and this is outside the review) – the “Robot Apocalypse” is a bit silly when you think about it. Robots don’t suffer labor, any more than you suffer when you play a farming game. Even if you think that robots could house enough AI to make them sentient, why would they care if they are reading poetry or doing the laundry. And certainly I cannot imagine that they would – should their no-kill chips be shut down – instantly paint skulls on their faces and go on massive angry killing sprees. If androids dream of electric sheep, do they mutter their anger over the artificial poop they have to clean up? I doubt it. Look, I worked forty  years in bland corporate jobs for assholes and if suddenly the opportunity presented itself, in no way would I grab a gun and start blasting.

That last paragraph is only my thoughts on this – its a bit of a trope that seems silly when you give it more than a passing thought. But believe what you wish.

Anyway, so that’s my review.

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