Michelle Herbert reviews Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill…
Sea of Rust is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is unlike many post-apocalyptic settings that we have read before, as humanity has been decimated and all those surviving in the Sea of Rust are robots. Some, those known as freebots were created by humanity, while others were created by A.I.’s. For some robots, this world is a utopia as there are no longer human overlords and directives to follow, but the novel is very dystopic, as there is now a different kind of hierarchical structure to this world, which leads us to meet a robot named Battle who is trying their utmost to be left alone.
When we meet Battle, they are stalking a robot in the Sea of Rust, waiting until they can take the robot’s parts for scrap and trade. Battle is completely dispassionate and yet also seems to be trying too hard to make sure that they are not seen as vulnerable. In the Sea of Rust, especially for those working as poachers (which Battle is), it is all about survival, this includes: being smart enough to upgrade your capabilities, avoiding other poachers and the more dreaded OWIs (One World Intelligences, who are slowly overriding the individuality of the remaining robots).
The book is split between the past and the present. In the present, we follow Battle’s need to exist as an individual, which is interspersed with the story of how humanity was exterminated and how this world came to be. The end of humanity is really interesting, as we see it from Battle’s perspective, rather than from a human’s. This part of the story is insightful and full of information, but deep down it focuses on the need to survive. This is one of the basic tenets of life on Earth, which has been passed down from humanity into their creations, and Battle is the epitome of this need to survive and be free.
The story itself is a race against time, both for Brittle who is trying to find the spare parts for the caregiver model, as there is no longer any need to continue making parts for that model, as there are no longer humans who need to be cared for. There is also the secondary story about those who want to stop the OWI’s endgame of total dominance of intelligent life on this planet.
We get to see just a small part of this world, but it is lively and full of different clans with there own rules that we get to meet as Brittle and those she grudgingly joins up with travel across the Sea of Rust. This book is a master class in characterisation, as all the robots Brittle meets on this journey have there own personalities and quirks whether they are the same make and model. Each is defined by their own experiences, while also showing that there is a struggle between their original programming and what they have experienced for themselves, especially the choices they made when given the option to survive or be switched off.
Sea of Rust is a fast-paced novel, filled with action and characters that have many different motivations. It is easy to look at the dilemmas that they face and wonder what you would do in a similar situation. This is a very enjoyable story that is also a good thought experiment about the worst case scenario if the singularity happened.
Michelle Herbert
Originally published January 3, 2019. Updated January 2, 2019.
