“You might be asking, “Pete, why would you read this book that’s clearly meant for children and probably just a Goosebumps knockoff that is not hilariously bad, not a stunning novel either, just kind of, well, IS?”
And I wish I had a good answer for you.
Here’s the best I can come up with:
I walk to the ARC once a week during my lunch break at work, and I look at the books. And on one of these trips, I thought, “You know, I bet some of these horror books for kids have some weird and hilarious stuff in them.” I bought one, this one, because it was there and the cover was at least a little funny. I didn’t read the description or anything, just went for it.
Basically what we’ve got here is an AI gone awry (this is kind of a pun depending on how incorrectly you’re willing to pronounce “awry,” which in my case is VERY wrong). A kid’s science project, a mechanical brain designed by his dad (who’s maybe dead? I think dead? Shot by hunters in the woods or killed by an evil wizard or, I don’t know, take your pick), goes horribly wrong because the brain does not want to ever be turned off, so it decides to KILL ALL HUMANS.
The funniest part is that our main boy, Daniel, has a rival: Frank Dunk. Just typing the name gets me all agitated, fuckin’ Frank Dunk.
Frank Dunk, in addition to having one of those names that demands putting down both the first and last name, has won the science fair several years in a row. This mechanical brain is Brian’s big shot.
Frank Dunk’s science project? A fear bomb. Yep, a bomb that will make people so terrified that they cannot do anything.
In what’s perhaps the ultimate version of, “Why, I never considered this wonderful invention being used for evil!” Frank Dunk presents his fear bomb as a home safety device.
So we’ve got a science far with an AI designed by a grade-schooler before the internet was really even functional, and we’ve got a fear bomb. Both WELL over the bar for a school science fair while also being almost immediately turned to evil purposes when the AI, now inhabiting a mannequin’s body, for which he’s created joints and so on, basically a Terminator underneath, steals the fear bomb.
Who could’ve seen this turn of events!?
The real question: do you give the science fair first prize to evil robot or fear bomb?
I think a lot of us would think evil robot at first, but I encourage you to dig deeper. Okay, an evil robot is badass, but is there anything about it we don’t really understand at this point? In other words, a group of unscrupulous scientists with a lot of money could probably present us an evil robot in like a week.
But fear bomb? Does anyone even know how to make that?
And once we have fear bomb, we’re only one very small step away from having a Scarecrow tormenting the city.
Once we have Scarecrow, we’re one step away from Batman, AND from answering the question of whether Batman is stopping crime or accidentally encouraging it just by existing (if the chicken comes before the egg, the scarecrow before the Batman, boom, problem solved).”