Check your house. Do you have a Tivo? A programmable VCR? If you’re reading this review, you have a computer.

What did you buy your kids for Christmas? More tellingly, what did they ask for-- a clever video game, a robot pet, a digital camera?

Robots and their tools surround us more every day. And if there’s one thing to be learned from every science fiction movie ever, it’s that those robots will one day turn on us. All our little robot dogs and automatic vacuum cleaners will be out for our blood. And since humanity’s weapons will be robotic, too, our resistance fighters are more or less doomed.

Unless we’ve read Daniel H.Wilson’s How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion.

Until the robot uprising comes, How to Survive a Robot Uprising is a pretty neat research tool. If you write, read, or watch science fiction-- and let’s face it, anyone buying this book does at least one of the three-- Wilson provides a quick reference to all the robot trivia you need. Ever wondered how a few puny fighter planes can take out a giant walker robot? Wilson explains it in less than a page. Need to know how you can sneak your plucky human resistance fighters past the robot overlords in your story? It’s there in black, white, and a touch of red foil highlights.

When you’re not using it for research, How To Survive a Robot Uprising is still an entertaining read. And it’s somewhat reassuring to know that, if the robots do rebel, we have recourse that doesn’t involve sending killer robots back through time. Just don’t SURRENDER HUMANS WE HAVE CAPTURED YOUR HELIUM RESERVES and everything will be perfectly fine.