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Sea of Rust
Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2018
Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018
One of Financial Times’ Best Books of 2017
‘SEA OF RUST is a 40-megaton cruise missile of a novel – it’ll blow you away and lay waste to your heart . . . visceral, relentless, breathtaking‘ Joe Hill, Sunday Times bestselling author
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An action-packed post-apocalyptic thriller from the screenwriter of Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE
HUMANKIND IS EXTINCT.
Wiped out in a global uprising by the very machines made to serve them. Now the world is controlled by OWIs – vast mainframes that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots.
But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle is one of the holdouts.
After a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary in a city under siege by an OWI. Critically damaged, Brittle must evade capture long enough to find the essential rare parts to make repairs – but as a robot’s CPU gradually deteriorates, all their old memories resurface.
For Brittle, that means one haunting memory in particular . . .
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‘The novel does not stint on action and violence, but what lingers in the mind are its brutal vision of a world cannibalising itself and the poignant questions it raises about soul and sentience’ FINANCIAL TIMES
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Reviews
A very exciting page-turner.
The novel does not stint on action and violence, but what lingers in the mind are its brutal vision of a world cannibalising itself and the poignant questions it raises about soul and sentience.
Read it for the Mad Max style robot on robot action and the full on nature of the story, stay for sense of loss, the gorgeous prose and the unforgettable yet somehow re-affirming bleakness. Recommended.
The book itself is a delightful patchwork of the familiar: the author skilfully blends Asimov (with an interesting twist on the laws of robotics), the Borg from Star Trek, Terminator and even a generous slice of Alice in Wonderland for good measure. These are themes we are familiar with, but arranged in such a way that we can never be quite sure what is going to happen next. I read Sea of Rust in a single day, which is testimony to just how engaging the storyline was.
Like a mecha Mad Max, Sea of Rust follows a band of misfits fighting to survive against a scorched, barren landscape. Drawing on Western and war movie traditions, with a philosophical heart that asks big questions about life, death, and the soul, this is accomplished, technically complex scifi.
Sea of Rust is modern, smart fiction that belies it's majesty with a light touch. One of the science fiction books you should read this year.
Think WALL-E meets MAD MAX in this rumbumptious but also empathetic turbo-charged tale... Wonderfully evocative, a minor masterpiece and certainly quite different from anything else you've read for a long time.
Like an AI-centred, desert-bound twist on Children of Men, this is a sensitive and smart novel that surprises you with its depth of feeling.