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. 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. We evolved. We were the next step. And here we were, our predecessors extinct, confronting our own challenges, pressing on into the future. Fighting for our own extinction.” Cargill’s setup of robotkind and their way of life, as well as Brittle’s own musings, reminiscences and recollections, invite discussion of philosophical and existential questions. Are bots the way they are because we created them in our own image? Is it learned behaviour, perhaps even some innate survival instinct of sentient beings? Is it relevant to talk about nature versus nurture in this context? And so on. Crucially though, these ideas are explored just enough to send us down potential rabbit holes in our own heads, without slowing down the Robopocalypse-based fun. They are sparks which can potentially ignite a fire rather than exhaustive meditations on sentience; food for thought as opposed to lectures or sermons.

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

When I described Robert Cargill’s third novel Sea of Rust four years ago, I called it “a robot western set in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which humans have been wiped out in a machine uprising.” Do I know how to get to the heart of a book, or what. Cargill was raised in a military family, growing up on army bases around the United States. He held several jobs prior to writing, including video store clerk and travel agent. [ citation needed] Career [ edit ] Film critic [ edit ] McMillan, Graeme (25 April 2016). " 'Doctor Strange' Screenwriter: "Every Single Decision That Involves the Ancient One Is a Bad One" ". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 29 December 2016. What we’ve got here, however, is a writer who isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. What is reality? Memory? Purpose? I found myself totally engrossed in the tale‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Cargill, C. Robert. "Sea of Rust". HarperCollins US. Archived from the original on 2017-09-27 . Retrieved 2017-09-26.

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018

Cargill is an interesting guy. In addition to the Sea of Rust books he’s written two fantasy novels, Dreams and Shadows and its sequel Queen of the Dark Things. But his big claim to fame is as a screenwriter, for Marvel’s Dr. Strange, and one of the best (and most disturbing) horror films of the last decade Sinister (2012), and its sequel Sinister II (2015).

SEA OF RUST | Kirkus Reviews

Here, specifically, is the point at which Sea of Rust lost all hope of engaging or impressing me. For context, GALILEO and TACITUS are mainframe AIs, upon whose history the narrator, Brittle, is expounding: To varying degrees, I've enjoyed each of C. Robert Cargill's books, each more so than the last. Queen of the Dark Things (3.5/5 stars) was an improvement over Dreams and Shadows (3/5 stars) and Sea of Rust here is a vast improvement over that book. Not only that, but the prose is also improving from book to book, as is the dialogue (though as it specifically pertains to SoR's characters, I'll get to that in the analysis) and the plotting and characterization are much, much better handled than his previous two books. The Rules of Attractions (2002)". Movieclips. Archived from the original on 2012-10-26 . Retrieved 2013-06-20. Cargill co-hosts the film podcast Junkfood Cinema with critic Brain Salisbury, [19] and the writing advice podcast Write Along with author David Chen. [20] Filmography [ edit ] Year Because while this section owes far less to Ayn Rand than it does to Charles Band, it’s still more than a little ponderous. The exuberant nihilism of those movies eventually falls away as we realise Brittle has never stopped feeling for the first human she killed and everything presented in the first half is the lies she tells herself. That’s well handled as is the surprising history of the war, but we don’t get enough of it. Instead, Team Brittle make their slow, inexorable way in a straight line towards, mostly, what they were always aiming at. The action is still fast and well handled but it also starts to get harder to hold on to. This is a novel that lives in the characters not what’s happening to them and the balance shifts too often in the other direction.A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.