'Robota' by artist Doug Chiang with text by Orson Scott Card is a book of beautiful illustrations that kind of feels like a movie pitch.

In a weird world ruled by robots, a man named Caps keeps waking up in a regeneration chamber. He forgets what happened before and keeps reliving things. He decides to overthrow the robots and assembles a motley crew of beings, including Juomes, a kind of ape/yeti creature, and a small monkey-like creature named Rend. There are others, and Caps will need them because the head robot Kaantur-Set has a secret about Caps.

Included are some additional art for the film pitch with some of the characters looking like familiar actors. There are also some pages from a proposed comic book.

It's kind of a space epic in the style of Burroughs. I liked the first 2/3 of it, then I felt like the story fell apart a bit. Regardless, the story is only here to show off the art, and the full color paintings are really nice. This gets a 3 for story and a 4 for art.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

I find it fascinating to pick up Chiang & Card's "Robota" in the wake of Gregory Manchess' "Above the Timberline," another glorious coffee-table-style work of fantastical science fiction, replete with lush artwork and a narrative which mostly exists to link the images. The connection is more fluid and lush in "Above the Timberline" than it is here, in "Robota," but I almost wonder how much of that is a consequence of this being a decades-long project of one individual which was then mostly written or strongly edited by another individual. "Robota" shares some flaws with Manchess' book, in that they both privilege the voices of men and make some missteps when it comes to race and gender, and they both feature female secondary characters who are actually FAR more interesting than any of the main male characters. Ah, such is publishing, I suppose. Such is science fiction as a genre. But lest you think I'm being too harsh, I also think "Robota" and "Above the Timberline" share the strengths of their common ancestors, not least among them the works of James Gurney] (of "Dinotopia" fame). They dare to push the format, to go big, to go REALLY big indeed, and to tackle the deep cinematographic potential of science fiction in a more staid, traditional form. That they are both passion projects says a great deal about what is considered 'marketable' and what really earns its place on my shelves. Sometimes they're the same thing, but rarely.

Artistically, it's clear that "Robota" also shares significant DNA with "Star Wars" (Episodes I & II especially), which is no surprise given Chiang's involvement in those films. Chiang's style includes streamlined, heavily stylized robots, and vast city- and landscapes which fall with monolithic notes upon the reader's visual field. They're beautiful, and striking, and the sort of thing I would have wallpapered my room with as a teenager, when I wasn't afraid of forfeiting my damage deposit. And I still think the visual stylings of Episodes I & II are those films' best features, and so I am deeply grateful to Chiang for salvaging a thing which almost completely went off the rails.

This book is an art book, first and foremost. An art book for the science fiction fan, and for anyone who enjoys art that has hints of the fantastic and mysterious.

It has beautiful and interesting artwork by Doug Chiang, who was the Design Director for Star Wars I and II. He's also been involved in the look of The Force Awakens and Rogue One.

The text is reminiscent to me, in parts, of a Ray Bradbury feel. Think "The Martian Chronicles." The combination of sci fi and mysticism, just a bit. It has friendship, collaboration, conflict. It has heroes. It has dark times and times of light, not unlike Star Wars, though it is its own story.

But this book is ***truly about the art.*** It's great in that respect. I was loaned an ebook edition through Netgalley for an honest review. I think you should consider the hard back book edition if you're interested. It's almost a coffee table book, in the very best sense.

Four stars. As I said, I received an ebook version from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Doug Chiang has worked on some great movies as an artist and production designer, most notably some of the Star Wars movies. His book Robota features his original art, paired with a story by Orson Scott Card. The art ranges from stunning and beautiful to interesting. Among the larger format concept paintings, he included pen-and-ink sketches and concept art.

None of the art in Robota is from Chiang's Star Wars work. The similarities in style are unmistakable; at times you might think, "Did I see that in The Phantom Menace? The story takes place on the planet Robota, which was developed by a robot race before conflict with the humans led society into disarray. Now the robots hunt humans and animals, and enhanced, sentient animals work with the humans.

Card's story is decent, but is really second-rate, compared to his major works and compared to the first-rate illustrations. My recommendation is to soak in the art, but don't worry about the story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

First off, Robota doesn't necessarily prescribe to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. On this alien influenced earth, robots carry the ability to think and they want to take over the world. Whereas once flesh and metal lived side by side, over time they became enemies - each striving for survival. While not all robots are bloodthirsty, Kaantur-Set, the general of the robot army, is obsessed with destroying all carbon based life forms on the planet. Enter Caps, a man whose amnesia leads him to search for the truth. Cap ends up joining a rag tag team, consisting of a monkey-like creature, a young woman raised by robots, and a yeti-looking gorilla, all out to get revenge. It's kill or be killed, yet they discover not every enemy is set on destruction, when they add Elyso, a robot whose sect refuses to harm humans, to their team.

While this world at times represents the Earth we know, the majority of the planet is fascinatingly bizarre yet somehow enticing, encouraging the reader to try and decipher the underlying meaning behind the fast paced, albeit confusing events. The stunning illustrations by Doug Chiang (who has numerous film credits to his name including Star Wars) creates a breathtaking fantasy world. Unfortunately, the narrative by Orson Scott Card, well known for his work in the SF genre, is totally perplexing, like a rough draft that has left out some pertinent details. Perhaps Chiang's prologue would have helped set the stage, but it was blurred and unreadable in my ebook. Luckily Wikipedia has the complete backstory, filling in the numerous blanks and providing the reader with enough details to obtain somewhat of a grasp on the plot line.

I find it especially annoying that there was no attempt to revise the written portion of the 2003 publication for this new 2016 edition of Robota, although there is the addition of a forward by Garett Edwards and some extra concept artwork by Chiang to enjoy.

At one point there was a promise for the creation of a video game using the Robota theme, although I would prefer to see an action movie visually bringing Chaing's conceptualizations to graphic life. There are a few glimpses of the possibilities on utube, where several 2 minute vignettes (with and without sound) are available to view. As I was reading the book, I couldn't help visualizing the animation possibilities which were more exciting than the written word. Yet, while the illustrations remained stupefying, they didn't always jive with the narration, despite their astonishing content.

Five stars to Chiang, 2 stars to Card for a total of 3.5 stars and a thank you to Netgalley and Dover Publications for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was reminiscent of an illuminated manuscript from the Renaissance period. A fantastic blend of "history" and pictures. The story was very engaging and I loved the world.

Overall, I felt like the plot moved too quickly and spent unnecessary time on aspects of the story that weren't crucial to the development of the characters or the world-building. At times, it felt as if the story was skipping or jumping around and I had to go back a few times to make sure I didn't skip a page. The images were beautiful, but they were placed in a way that broke up the text in inconvenient ways (sometimes right in the middle of sentences) and that made this feeling of sporadic jumping feel even more apparent.

Again, I will say that the art is beautiful, and I almost wish that Chiang had created a full-fledged graphic novel that would celebrate his talent art and the story, instead of the being the strange hybrid that it is. The addition of extra sections of art at the end was confusing. I wasn't sure what the main purpose of the book was supposed to be. It felt like the goal was not to focus on being a conventional narrative in a graphic novel or book format, but some elaborate attempt at a creative pitch or reason for the story to be adapted into a feature film or comic series.

I hate giving "bad" reviews, but I was disappointed with this book.

First published in 2003; republished by Dover Books on November 16, 2016

A fair number of science fiction fans wet themselves when they hear the name Orson Scott Card. Yes, he’s done some good work, but it isn’t all special. Case in point: Robota.

Robota is the name given to the Earth after it has been conquered by robots. When the story begins, Caps wakes up inside a machine with no memory of how he got there or what his purpose might be. He finds he is in a world where robots smoke pipes and hunt monsters. Fortunately, he’s befriended by a talking monkey who can explain the world’s dangers.

Caps received a message inside the machine that said something about Font Prime, but he doesn't understand the message. He befriends a monster, Juomes, who blames Font Prime for the persecution of talking animals. Juomes (who looks suspiciously like a Wookie) teaches Caps to fight and they all go wandering about looking for a way to defeat the robots and kill Font Prime so that humans can rise again. Or at least sentient animals can rise, given the scarcity of humans.

The monkey and the monster are sentient because of something called cubing jewels. That leads to some simplistic (masquerading as profound) observations about the difference between sentient creatures, which appreciate beauty, and robots, which appreciate oil. There are good robots and (mostly) bad robots, which leads to some simplistic (masquerading as profound) observations about the difference between good and bad. What it boils down to is, bad robots want to kill humans and good robots don’t.

It’s easy to see prejudice against robots as a metaphor for prejudice against Muslims or gays or immigrants, in the sense that all robots need to be judged individually, including the one who betrays his fellow robots to join forces with Caps and Juomes and the monkey and a woman who dwells in a mushroom city. Like the other messages in this story, it's too obvious to be effective.

Card’s world building seems a bit random (how about a mushroom city and … and a stone city and … and … hmm, I got it … a city that floats in the air!) but the world building shows more imagination than the plot, which is both derivative and predictable.

After the story dogs along for a while, relying largely on unsuccessful attempts at monkey humor, Card reveals a premise that is moderately clever in one sense and predictable in another. Then the story dogs along some more. The good bits (and there are some) are cancelled out by the lame bits, leaving me indifferent to the whole. It certainly didn't make me wet myself.

This is an illustrated story. Doug Chiang's poster-style art is nice but it isn’t spectacular, and other than making it apparent that Juomes looks a lot like a Wookie, it doesn’t add much of value.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The story and the artwork in this book are fabulous!!! Orson Scott Card has written an engaging story about a world taken over by the very robots humans help build. The robots are trying to kill all human life. Written like a graphic novel the action flows along with the incredible artwork at a fast pace. As a print book this will be stunning; as an epub the pictures do not flow as well since often you see only one page of a two page layout at a time. The forward and afterwords allude to a movie being made of the story - this would be truly spectacular.The talent and craftsmanship of the artist involved is unbelievably exquisite.
I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful story.

Doug Chiang has taken his fantastic concept art and with the help of Orson Scott Card crafted a story for it. Robota is the story of a planet in decay. Robots and hmans used to work in union for the greater good before the robots decided to try and wipe out humanity. Now hundreds of years later a ragtag team of heroes tries to stop the robots from ending humankind completely.

Robota is… well uhm… WOW!
Graphic artist Doug Chiang (Star Wars, Forrest Gump, Polar Express and much more) started working on Robota in 1993 as a graphic concept, later on Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) came on board to tell the story. So is it a graphic novel, an illustrated story you might ask. It is neither of both! It is a coming together of 2 creative minds and a collective achievement of art and writing.

Chiang’s graphic art, which is over a wide range of techniques from sketches and (digital) paintings, is wonderful! Since he worked on this project since 1993 there’s a development noticeable in skills and techniques. The images have, sometimes, a dated feeling over them which is off course explainable by the time span used to finish this project. Overall this is no problem, every artist has it’s development over the years.

Scott Card contributed with a great story which is entertaining and caring.

Together they’ve created a wonderful masterpiece which shows what can happen when 2 talented people put their hands and minds together.

Netgalley was kind enough to send me a copy of this book as a PDF. The artwork is amazing, unfortunately, the print is unreadable. I have requested a copy from the library. I will update my review when I read the library copy.