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I just finished Robota, which OSC co-authored with Doug Chiang last year. I wanted to know what other OSC fans thought of it.
I went to Doug Chian's web site and found that he has created 4 CGI-animated "movie" trailers for this book, which are all very good. Chiang also writes that the book is going to be made into a Sony video game, and OSC is going to write a novelization of that game.
I was wondering if anyone had any insight into why Card chose this particular project. I remember reading in an essay or interview after he novelized THE ABYSS, that he did not want to write any more books set in other people's worlds. Something along the lines of "Life's too short to tell other somebody else's stories..."
I thought the artwork in the book, and the whole mileu it created, were good. The story itself -- which Chiang came up with -- was a little shallow, I thought.
But OSC did a good job of creating motives for the characters and fleshing out the relationships as much as possible. I feel he was hindered by the design of the book which (as Chiang says on his web site) is "more of an art book than a novel". I felt Card had to speed up the action more than usual, so that the narrative kept up with the pictures. It was almost like an unwritten rule that nearly every page have a new picture, depicting a new scene, and Card's text had to rush to keep pace (or maybe it was intended to be a YA novel and I'm making too big a deal about it).
But still, it was interesting project. Has anyone else read it? What did you think?
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