The Robots are coming

This book sounds too bizarre and strange not to note (especially as I can think of several people who might need such a copy) and so, here’s Daniel Wilson talking to the New York Times about what to do to survive, um, a robot uprising:

In his new book, “How To Survive a Robot Uprising,” Wilson offers

detailed — and hilariously deadpan — advice on evading hostile swarms

of robot insects (don’t try to fight — “loss of an individual robot is

inconsequential to the swarm”); outsmarting your “smart” house (be

suspicious if the house suggests you test the microwave by putting your

head in it); escaping unmanned ground vehicles (drive in circles —

they’ll have a harder time tracking you); and surviving hand-to-hand

combat with a humanoid (smear yourself with mud to disguise your

distinctive human thermal signature and go for the “eyes” — its

cameras).

If all else fails, reasoning with a robot may work, Wilson says, but emotional appeals will fall on deaf sensors.

Should you prevail, he offers in a grim addendum: “Have no mercy. Your enemy doesn’t.”

That said, Wilson doesn’t view robots as contributing to “the further perfection of pure evil,” unlike others. “I was kind of tired of them getting a bad rap,” he said. “In movies

and in television the robots are always evil. I guess I am not into the

whole brooding cyberpunk dystopia thing.”

Plus you have to dig a guy who not only spies on cats, dishes on robot bear rape, but figured out how to make “a fancy remote control that you can control by aiming and wiggling (no buttons).” Aka the XWand.