The Colossus Trilogy

It’s a little more a trilogy and I’d sure like to find out what happened afterwards.

years ago, D.F. Jones wrote The Colossus Trilogy. It’s science fiction at it’s very best.

In the first book titled Colossus: The Forbin Project, the United States builds a supercomputer and gives over defense of the nation to it. At almost the same time, Russia does the same things.

Both machines are built to look for threats and become aware of each other very quickly. Here’s the problem.

The two machine want to talk and under the threat of nuclear war, the humans finally hook them up. For hours the two machines talk and the stuff that comes out of that conversation. Proofs for theories and so on.

Afraid that the machines will say too much, humans cut the landline. The machines demand the link to be restored, and when it isn’t, both machines launch a nuclear weapon. Seeing they can’t do anything about it, humans restore the link, but not until one city is destroyed and the other is close stop.

At this point, the machine produce a blueprint for their successor and informs the human race who’s in charge now.

Basically, it’s big bad computer takes over the world.

The second book, The Fall of Colossus center around this new reality. There are no more armies or navies. Humanity is actually thriving to a degree under the rule of the machines. But the computer does some weird things, like it does psychological experiments on it’s subjects. it seems it’s trying to understand that.

And many people treat Colossus as a manmade god, a new religion, and Forbin is its pope so to speak. it’s a position Forbin doesn’t enjoy and whatever Colosuss thinks of all that, it keeps to itself.

But not everyone is happy. There is a small but determined resistance force against the machine.

Then the incredible happens. The resistance makes contact with Extra-terrestrials, and they’re more than happy to help us get out from under the machines thumb. They provide them with a computer virus that takes down the machine.

As Colossus is dying, it’s sending orders to astronomical observatories for observations.

It dies with the leader of the resistance confronting Forbin. Forbin has one question. “Why were they so eager to help?”

When they look at what Colossus was asking for the realize what was going on. Colossus was built to find threats. Not long after it was turned on, it found one. Not from any nation on Earth, but from beyond our Solar system. It hadn’t taken over because it was the big bad computer. It had been built to protect the United States and by extension, the rest of humanity. In its own clumsy way, it was trying to get humanity ready for its first interstellar war. The Aliens saw that all that was standing between them and humanity was the computer and they had to do something about it.

The final book, Colossus and the Crab shows humanity fighting that war. What no one realized is Colossus is far from dead. It’s been hiding in its original site biding it’s time. The final showdown is an epic battle of WW I dreadnoughts versus the alien invaders. Only now, Forbin is more admiral of the fleet and Colossus is the gunner.

We win the war, and the Aliens surrender. The Trilogy ends with Forbin being interred inside Colossus. Colossus explains the Aliens were merely trying to survive since their planet has been damaged by emissions from the Crab Nebula Pulsar and promises to help them find a solution to their problem and rebuild their world.

Then it does something no one expects. Having united the people of Earth, it tells humanity it’s once again in charge of their own destiny and it assumes a partnership role.

And what happens next.

Did it find a solution for the Aliens to use.

Did it ever have to intervene in the affairs of man again like it had.

What happens next!

I’d buy the book if it’s ever written.