Sea of Rust: C. Robert Cargill

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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. 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. 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.

Day Zero, Review - Benjawi Day Zero, Review - Benjawi

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. DAY ZERO is a brilliant addition to the world of Sea of Rust. If this is your first read of this world, then you won't struggle to understand what is going on. I didn't know that I needed more of this world until I read this, and now I want even more. Is it as good as Sea of Rust? Almost. It's very close, but for me, Sea of Rust edges it. That should take nothing away from Day Zero though, as it's another excellent entry into the world that doesn't suffer from the follow-up syndrome that you occasionally get. That it's almost on par with one of my favourite books shows how good this is and it makes you think a lot more than Sea of Rust did. 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. Sea of Rust is the novel I’ve connected with the least so far and given my fondness for action cinema and robots punching robots that’s surprised me. But while I, and I suspect most of the others, have serious problems with it, Sea of Rust absolutely deserves to be here. Not just because the invention on display and the subversion of the early political viewpoint works as well as it does either. But because this is pop culture, action heavy and mainstream science fiction. And none of those things mean it’s any less worthy a place in the genre than anything else we have here. In fact, this is one of the most important parts of SF and one that is rarely given the attention it deserved. Hopefully Sea of Rust being here will change that a little. Foz Meadows

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018

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. 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… 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. Lussier, Germain (1 March 2013). " 'Sinister 2′ Moving Forward From Original Creators". slashfilm . Retrieved 23 June 2013.

Sea of Rust: A Novel: Cargill, C. Robert: 9780062405852

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.It’s very rare for me to gush about a book but this one is just made of awesome. I’m all about Post Apocalyptic fiction and I can’t get enough of it‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 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. The original concept came from a nightmare after seeing The Ring, consisting of him going up to his attic and finding a box of super 8 films. [2] [22]

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

Cargill, under the pseudonym of Kit Lesser, wrote a biopic about FBI agent William Hagmaier (played by Elijah Wood) and his relationship with serial killer Ted Bundy. [17] "There have been a lot of movies and a lot of media made about Ted Bundy, and one of the things that bugged me a lot was that it's all kind of selling the myth of Ted Bundy and kind of glorifying him in a way," Cargill told Jordan Gass-Poore, the host of the horror-comedy podcast, Pod of Madness. "And the deeper you dig into the story you realize there's nothing to mystify here, there's nothing amazing about him." The film was released in 2021 as No Man of God. It also doesn’t serve any of the main ideas as well as it could. The Western stylings play as cute, without self-awareness on the part of the characters, in a way they shouldn’t. The genuinely fascinating main plot concerning the OWIs gets a brilliant last minute twist that’s not fully explored. Worse of all the tropes the novel leans on are the least interesting ones, including a tough former sexbot with a heart of gold who never got over her overweight socially awkward owner. Andy Chalk published (2022-04-06). "The cancelled Deus Ex movie script actually sounds pretty good". PC Gamer . Retrieved 2022-08-29.

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Brittle is the protagonist. "She" (there's an interesting digression as she talks about the notion of gender as it applies to robots, and how they mostly chose a gender because "it" was, if you will, dehumanizing) was once a dying rich man's personal assistant and caregiver, who left her to his wife after he died. Brittle is now a loner who scavenges for parts out in the badlands, the "Sea of Rust" which is the former Midwest. She's afflicted with the robot version of PTSD, and we gradually learn more about her part in the war, and the things she did. What does it do to a robot who was created and programmed to be a nurturing, caregiving friend of humanity to turn against her masters, until she's literally using a flamethrower on children? The plot of course involves an OWI as a Big Bad, and Brittle and her "friends" (a ragtag collection of survivors who mostly aren't friends at all) end up on a possibly hopeless quest to defeat the OWIs once and for all. Along the way, there are the inevitable reveals and betrayals and deaths, just like in a book about people. In this book, robots are people. Eugene R. on Terror at Sea, Nightmares on the Beach: The Year’s Best Horror Stories XIV, edited by Karl Edward Wagner The scientists doubted TACITUS’s theory, citing that GALILEO had never mentioned anything about economics; they simply refused to believe that they had been doomed by such a simple and easily changeable element of their society. So TACITUS turned to GALILEO itself and asked. The conversation lasted for more than two years. Each time scientists pressed for TACITUS to tell them what GALILEO was saying, he asked for more time, explaining that the data exchange was so massive that even the wide data transfer lanes they were afforded couldn’t handle it. Eventually, GALILEO finished its argument and TACITUS gave his last reply. He said, ‘GALILEO is right. You are doomed. It’s already begun. There’s really no reason to keep talking to you. Good-bye.’ Cargill ( Queen of the Dark Things, 2014, etc.) takes readers to Earth's post-human future in which robots struggle to survive and remain free of their own robot overlords.