Artificial Selection cover art

Artificial Selection

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Artificial Selection

By: Marianne Pickles
Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £15.71

Buy Now for £15.71

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for the first 3 months. Terms apply.

HIGH TECH, HIGH WATER, AND THE HEAD OF AWKWARD QUESTIONS

A cozy sci-fi mystery from the winner of the Green Stories Prize!

The year is 2101, and half of England is underwater.

But society is recovering from the Melt, thanks to ArkTech, whose eco-friendly headquarters sit serenely above the newly formed Fenland Sea.

As ArkTech's Head of Awkward Questions, Charlotte Vance is dedicated to helping Ben, the company's curious AI. Ben has a fondness for dad jokes, a knack for spotting anomalies, and happens to be Charlotte’s best friend.

Naturally, when Ben notices a geneticist vandalizing pre-Melt books and a librarian looking the other way, he sends Charlotte to investigate.

What starts as a quirky case of stolen blank pages and clandestine book clubs soon leaves Charlotte caught between the black-market operation she thought she’d left behind and the company she's always trusted.

Set in a near future that is neither utopia nor wasteland, Artificial Selection is ideal for listeners who enjoy character-driven whydunnits, or charming sci-fi with humour and heart–perfect for fans of Terry Pratchett, Martha Wells, and Becky Chambers.

©2024 Marianne Pickles (P)2024 Marianne Pickles Adventure Dystopian Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Continue the series
Time Hack cover art
Time Hack By: Marianne Pickles
All stars
Most relevant
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!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was absolutely obsessed by this book, and can't wait for the sequel. The plot was suspensful, and I loved how the main characters' relationships deepened. I laughed out loud a lot, and also went away with a lot to think about - highly recommended.

Gripping and thought-provoking

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I read the book for the first read, this was a re-read in preparation for book 2.
The story is super interesting and manages to touch on very serious topics without it feeling too heavy. There's mystery, there's friendship and there's a hint of love in the air.
The narration is also great!
Now onto book 2!

Still great!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews