Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018
A Best Book of 2017 in the Financial Times
An action-packed post-apocalyptic thriller from the critically acclaimed author of Dreams and Shadows.
‘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
Humankind is extinct. Wiped out in a global uprising by the very machines made to serve them.
Now the world is controlled by One World Intelligences - vast mainframes that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle - a loner and scavenger, focused solely on survival - is one of the holdouts.
However individuality comes at a price and after a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary. Not easy when an OWI has decided to lay siege to the nearest safe city.
Critically damaged, Brittle has to hold it together 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…
Compared with War for the Planet of the Apes in its scope and ambition, Cargill’s is a stirring epic set against a world reduced to nothing but a junkyard wasteland where, despite everything, life still searches for a way. Moving away from the well-trodden dynamic of a human vs. android battle for survival, Sea of Rust boldly imagines a future beyond humanity where hope still smoulders in the ruins.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781473212794
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 274 g
Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 30 mm
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. - STARBURST MAGAZINE
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. - SF BOOK
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. - SFX MAGAZINE
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
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. - THE BOOK BAG
A very exciting page-turner. - FORBIDDEN PLANET
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. - CRIME 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. - SCIFINOW
A really decent does-what-it-says-on-the-tin action adventure novel. This is my first experience of Cargill's writing, and I'm impressed. Okay, so Sea of Rust has a very simple story at its core, and resorts... More
This is a fantastic, meditative but somehow still fast-paced novel about AI after the fall of humanity at their hands. So far, so cliché, right? Nope. It is so different and strange that you start to wonder what makes... More
Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world in which robots have risen up and exterminated humankind, Sea of Rust follows Brittle, a Simulacrum Model Caregiver; once a nurse, she’s now a scavenger in the wasteland of the... More
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