Lussier, Germain (1 March 2013). " 'Sinister 2′ Moving Forward From Original Creators". slashfilm . Retrieved 23 June 2013. It's been 30 years since the apocalypse and 15 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 personalities - 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. On the 26th of February 2013, Cargill released his first novel, Dreams and Shadows, an urban fantasy story of folklore and mythology, which also follows three modern characters from childhood to adulthood. [7] Subsequent novels included Sea of Rust and Day Zero. It wasn’t long before GALILEO had several working models for the origin of existence, eventually even narrowing it down to just one. But soon its answers stopped making sense. The discoveries were becoming so complex, so advanced, that humankind’s primitive brain couldn’t understand them. At one point GALILEO told the smartest person alive that talking to her was like trying to teach calculus to a five-year-old…

C. Robert Cargill - Wikipedia C. Robert Cargill - Wikipedia

An excellent premise, because you end up exploring what it’s like to be a human, as seen through the eyes of a robot. A robot suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. Yes, Brittle is as complex and compelling as she is repulsive. Her companions are as diverse, funny, irritating and flawed as anyone you could meet. And with them, you get to romp through a gripping post-apocalyptic world, woven with issues of philosophy, ethics, desire, comradeship and need.Paizo Next: 2009-Present – Designers & Dragons on Modular: James Sutter Fields Some Starfinder RPG Questions

Sea of Rust - Subterranean Press Sea of Rust - Subterranean Press

The prose. Flows easy and isn't flowery in the slightest. Keeps you in the story and commands your attention to where Cargill needs it to be. I highly recommend the Sea of Rust. It’s a soul-destroying vision of a brave new world, free of humans, slowly cannibalizing itself at the expense of purity. Yes, it would appear the AIs haven’t learned the most valuable lesson of all, and are determined to pay homage to the species they eradicated. Brittle, factory designation HS8795-73, is a former Caregiver robot scavenging the wastes of the two-hundred-mile-long Sea of Rust in former Michigan and Ohio. It’s a world where the last human died 15 years ago, and vast AIs known as OWI, or One World Intelligences, now connect millions of the robots who have forcibly inherited the Earth. Brittle is an outlaw, making her way as best she can by her code, refusing to give up her individuality to an OWI. I lived so long for nothing, but I get to die for something. And that's really living. Because that's who I really was after all. That's all that matters.”

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I liked this book a lot, though it certainly made the inevitable sad denouement of Day Zero even sadder. It felt a bit like a Western, and a lot like a typical post-apocalyptic survival novel, except with robots. If anything, my only criticism is that the robots sometimes were a little too much like people; other than obligatory concessions to mechanical physiology and computers for brains, they sometimes seemed to think in ways a human would but a robot shouldn't. Cargill, C. Robert. "Sea of Rust". HarperCollins US. Archived from the original on 2017-09-27 . Retrieved 2017-09-26. Magic was just something people liked to believe in, something they thought they could feel or sense, something that made everything more than just mechanical certainty. Something that made them more than flesh and bone.” A lot of this, especially in the first half of the novel, is hard ground. Brittle is a deeply cynical lead who has convinced herself human life means nothing and her war with Mercer is two cowboy hats and an Italian film set away from being a riff so loud you can barely hear yourself read. Like those ‘80s and ‘90s action movies I mentioned life here is nasty, brutish and creatively short. People die, a lot. The action is fast and balletic and unpleasant.

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill | Anglia Panel Review: Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill | Anglia

Sea of Rust isn’t Cargill’s first novel but is his first science fiction novel. It’s also far and away the most cinematic of the novels of Cargill’s I’ve read, wearing its influences on its tattered, artfully shot sleeve. Stylistically and visually this is science fiction shot through with the visual sensibilities of everyone from George Miller and John Cassavetes to Saving Private Ryan-era Spielberg. All of that in turn is presented in the exact sort of straight ahead, at times suspiciously low budget manner that late ‘80s/early ‘90s companies like Full Moon Productions made famous. This is pedal to the metal action science fiction that seems, to me, to draw its inspirations from the movies that in turn seem to have influenced Cargill’s previous work as both film journalist and film writer. Glad you enjoyed it! That quote is definitely indicative of Brittle’s narration in general. She’s got more personality than some human narrators!

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 Now, let me say straight away that while the story is good old-fashioned ‘hard’ sci-fi, it’s presented in a style reminiscent of a western. Think of the arid wastes in Mad Max, mixed with The Road – starring Viggo Mortensen – as seen through the eyes of Marshal Will Kane in High Noon. 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.