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Discover | Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

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A robot western, what's not to like about that?

There is only one human in this book and they get killed off pretty quickly. The rest of the story revolves around a post apocolyptic world inhabited only by robots. Our hero 'Brittle' survives by travelling the desert wastes looking for parts she can use to recycle and trade.

Soon she finds she is being hunted, and as the story unfolds we discover why humanity is gone and how the mega-computer rose to power.


There’s a lot here that you might recognise. Think A.I. meets Mad Max & The Terminator, with a knowing nod to Isaac Asimov’s ideas and Colossus: The Forbin Project. It is a supremely well-thought-out scenario, with the future being a sensible extrapolation from now. The result of this proliferation of robots and artificial intelligence is a wonderfully imaginative world that seems right. It would be easy to have mass-produced robots being rather uniform in manner and purpose, yet the author has clearly made a great deal of effort in imagining a variety of different types of robots with different mannerisms and characteristics.


Sea of Rust

by C. Robert Cargill
A scavenger robot wanders in the wasteland created by a war that has destroyed humanity in this evocative post-apocalyptic "robot western" from the critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, and noted film critic.

It’s been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI—One World Intelligence—the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality—their personality—for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories—and nearly unbearable guilt.

Sea of Rust is both a harsh story of survival and an optimistic adventure. A vividly imagined portrayal of ultimate destruction and desperate tenacity, it boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, yet where a humanlike AI strives to find purpose among the ruins




In these post titled 'Discovery (or Up and Coming Reads)', I want to provide you with some suggested reading material. These are books which look interesting to me and that I'd like to share with you. The links will be affiliate links, so if you going to make a purchase at Amazon I'd appreciate you using the link. Doing so will help me buy more books so it should be a win-win for us both.

Enjoy reading more and thinking more... with your favourite beverage!


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