This second volume of the Colossus trilogy takes a big dive in quality on all fronts. I leave aside the shaky continuity which now seems to place the timescale much further into the future than the first book even though this is supposed to be only five years later. Also I skate over the strange turnaround which has Forbin now a sort of high priest of a cult religion that has grown up around Colossus and the fact that he now loves the dictatorial machine which he hated in book 1 (and continues to despite what it does to his family later). But there are aspects of this book which even in the 1970s when this was written must have been unacceptable to at least some of the potential readership.

Briefly, Doctor Cleo Markham has now married Professor Forbin and they have a young son. She seems to still be working - in that she has an office - but there is no clue as to what scientific work she is doing because the author has no interest in that. Instead, she is a sort of mother figure to Forbin who has become almost totally spaced out, infantalised and disconnected from reality. In her spare time, Cleo is a leader in the resistance movement, alongside Blake, a friend of Forbin's from the first book. One day she takes her son to the beach with a radio and a message comes through from the Martians who offer to help defeat Colossus which is a threat to them too - this then provides the driver for the whole story.

The premise that humans are unable, without help from aliens, to overturn the Big Brother rule of the enhanced Colossus - a supercomputer built by the initial Colossus - which now runs everything from a totally demolished Isle of Wight - weakens all the characters and introduces yet another element for which disbelief must be suspended. But the real car crash in the book is the extremely misogynistic subplot involving experiments by Colossus into human emotion which it cannot understand - specifically love. Centres exist where abducted humans are tested against various premises - such as would an art lover sacrifice himself to save a world famous great work of art or would two lovers throw each other over in exchange for better job prospects and potential partners. One centre has been set up to test whether the Roman legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women (where rape victims came to love and identify with the men who abducted them) is true or not. The sections where the victim in question develops Stockholm Syndrome when repeatedly raped by a brutal, ignorant and violent man, are absolutely awful with the author informing us that this is true fulfilment for women. And this is despite the author also telling the reader that women are supposedly equal in this imagined future.

The characters from book 1 are all unrecognisable. Blake is an unpleasant misogynist himself, Forbin seems to have had a lobotomy and what happens to Cleo is truly unbelievable. People drink alcohol constantly to a point where they must all be late stage alcoholics. Given all this I could only rate this book at 1 star as I didn't enjoy it at all. ( )

D. F. Jones’s tale of a computer’s takeover of the world picks up five years from where his previous novel, Colossus, left off. Having replaced itself with a more advanced system of its own design, Colossus is now established as the unchallenged overlord of humanity. From its sprawling complex on the Isle of Wight, the computer has eliminated poverty and developed naval war games fought between automated battleships as an outlet for international aggression. Having ended famine and war, a growing cult called the Sect worships Colossus as a god. Charles Forbin, the creator of the first Colossus, now serves the computer and is reconciled to his rule, yet a resistance movement called the Fellowship conspires to bring Colossus’s reign to an end.

Among the leading members of the Fellowship is Forbin’s own wife, Cleo. One morning while taking her son to a secluded beach, she receives a radio transmission from Mars offering to help destroy Colossus. Though skeptical, she contacts Blake, Colossus’s Director of Input and the leader of the Fellowship. Together they collect the information requested I the mysterious transmission, but Cleo is arrested by Sect and imprisoned. With nowhere else to turn, Blake uses Cleo’s capture to enlist Forbin’s help to complete the instructions in the transmission and get the information necessary to destroy Colossus. Yet as Forbin accomplishes his mission, it quickly becomes apparent that Colossus is not the only threat facing humanity . . .

Jones’s novel is an enjoyable sequel up to his first book, a minor classic of science fiction. While plagued with some glaring continuity errors (and containing a rather disgusting "traumatized victim falls for rapist" subplot that dates the book even more than the technology references), it compensates for it by the author’s description of Colossus’s global management, with peace tempered by a secret police and experimentation and torture inflicted on dissidents as part of the computer’s effort to understand human emotion. Fans of the original novel will find it an entertaining book, one that fulfills the speculations made at the end of the first book while setting the stage for the concluding volume in the trilogy. ( )

The fall of Colossus finally is achieved; hopefully, the end of a nightmare and the beginning of a real life.