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Artificial Selection

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Artificial Selection

By: Marianne Pickles
Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
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About this listen

An AI, an investigator, and a geneticist walk into a library...

It’s the year 2101, and half of England is underwater, but the horrors of the Melt are becoming a distant memory thanks to ArkTech, the company that saved the world.

The ArkTech Territory is the only home Charlotte Vance has ever known, so when Ben, the company’s curious AI, starts asking awkward questions about human behaviour, she's only too happy to help.

But as she investigates the mystery of why a geneticist is stealing pages from library books, Charlotte is forced to confront unsettling truths about her past, and about the company she’s always trusted.

The deeper she digs, the more she realises her discoveries could threaten everything she holds dear. Charlotte must make a choice – and the wrong decision could cost her everything.

©2024 Marianne Pickles (P)2024 Marianne Pickles Adventure Dystopian Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction

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Loved this book - intriguing world-building and wry humour made it a compulsive listen. The narrator was fantastic, clearly differentiating the characters and in particular rendering Ben both artificial and charismatic. I haven't read a lot of scifi but this reminded me a bit of The Expanse, which is my favourite scifi series. It also really appealed to the detective and historical fiction side of me, with some great literary allusions for the literature nerd. I'm already impatient for the next book in the series!

Intriguing plot, charismatic characters, great narration

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This really is a great detective sci-fi story! Set in a flooded future which unlike a lot of science fiction you could imagine actually becoming a reality, it sets up an intriguing plot around missing pages from books in a library and twists it in thoughtful and unpredictable ways - it kept me guessing all the way through. Written in a way that channels Terry Pratchett but has a voice all of its own, it should be of interest to anyone who, for example, gets a kick out of the philosophical problems raised by Data from Star Trek or who just enjoys trying to guess what’s going on in an Agatha Christie.
Charlotte Vance and Ben are an engaging and unusual detective-like pairing - and if you’re interested in where AI might end up before long, Ben and Ark-Tech will give you a vision of one possible future… a pessimistic or optimistic vision? You will have to decide for yourself because Pickles is too intelligent an author to make such things obvious and one of the great strengths of this book is that you never quite know if you’re reading about a utopia or a dystopia.
The audiobook is very ably read, bringing out both the depth and the humour of the characters.
Strong recommendation!

Artificial Selection: great read!

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This was an engrossing story, told with a quirky sense of humour, but delivering some emotional gut punches and addressing some issues that really resonate for us today. The setting is great - very different, yet very familiar. Also, I like how the detective story takes you to all sorts of unexpected places. I thought the narration really captured the tone of the story and the personality of the different characters, human and AI. Highly recommended!

An engrossing story, brilliantly performed

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