Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson (review)

More than a decade ago, John Purdy, former editor of sail, observed that there seemed to be only so much room for Native authors in literary criticism. The “Big Three” (Momaday, Welch, and Silko) gave way to the ‘big four” (add Gerald Vizenor), which gave way to the “big five” (enter Louise Erdrich), which gave way to the “big six” (plus Tom King), which finally came to be the “big seven” (include Sherman Alexie). Occasionally, by sheer force of imagination and talent, another contender muscles his or her way in—think Tomson Highway, LeAnne Howe, Susan Power, and Joseph Boyden. If, however, one surveys the critical ink spilled in journal articles and conference papers since the onset of the so-called Native American Renaissance, the vast majority of it has concerned the seven writers listed above.

To a certain extent, this fact is understandable. All seven of the authors noted are popular and immensely gifted. Their works are regularly taught in literature and Native American/American Indian studies (na/ais) courses. With the exception of Jim Welch, who passed prematurely, all of them are still productive. Vizenor, Erdrich, and King—at least—are still at the height of their powers. Yet the narrow focus on this small group of authors, to the relative exclusion of consideration of other equally talented Native writers, has led to Native literature—once a vital wellspring of na/ais—being marginalized.

In the related genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, the field of Native candidates for recognition is inevitably much narrower than for Native lit as a whole. Vizenor’s first novel, Darkness in St. Louis Bearheart (later republished as Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles) is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece. One also thinks of graphic artists and writers such as Roy Boney, Joseph Erb, A. A. Carr (with his Navajo vampire novel, Eye Killers), and Daniel Heath Justice, who created a fantasy world around Cherokee Removal in his excellent “The Way of Thorn and Thunder” trilogy. Yet, just as Purdy noted that there only is so much room for Native writers in general, despite the quality of the work generated by these artists, in the sci-fi/horror/fantasy field, all the critical oxygen seems to have been sucked up by Blackfoot author Stephen Graham Jones.

The time has come to blow the cobwebs both off Native literary criticism generally and discussion of American Indian science fiction/horror specifically. Taking nothing away from Jones, there is a new sheriff in town. Like Boney, Erb, and Justice, he is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. His name is Daniel H. Wilson.

In 2011, Wilson, who has a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, published Robopocalypse, a nightmare vision of a future uprising of robots against their human masters, led by an artificial intelligence known as Archos r-14. After three years of bloody (and bloodless) combat between humans and machines, humanity vanquishes the robot army and destroys Archos r-14. At the vanguard of the victory is the Gray Horse Army (gha), a mixed-race fighting force of Osages, Cherokees, and non-Natives. Guiding them toward the underground lair of “Big Rob” was a “sighted” girl, Mathilda Perez, the daughter of a US congresswoman who was genetically modified and given digital eyes while interned in a labor camp run by the robots.

Robopocalypse unfolds in a “found-footage” way, told from multiple perspectives in scraps assembled by Cormac Wallace, the leader of Bright Boy squad of the gha, after the victory. Wallace provides introductions to each fragment and acts as an overarching narrator. Wilson’s technique recalls Michael Crichton’s in The Andromeda Strain, and he uses it to great effect.

Robogenesis, despite a title suggesting a prequel, picks up right where the first book leaves off. As with its predecessor, the story here is told by multiple narrators, but the found-footage device has been scrapped. And though Wallace remains an important character, the overarching narrator is an unknown named Arayt Shah, who it gradually dawns may...