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Summer Frost

Forward collection

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About this listen

Audible narration by Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel)

A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision - veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

Blake Crouch’s Summer Frost is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

©2019 Blake Crouch (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Adventure Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Science Fiction Technothrillers Thriller Thriller & Suspense Technology Artificial Intelligence

Critic reviews

"Rosa Salazar provides a dead-on, almost eerie, performance of an AI in this short science fiction story...altering her performance as the AI refines and reinvents itself throughout the story. It's a startling evolution of character, driven home by Salazar’s transition from passive dialogue to gut-punching directness. The story challenges what it means to be human and gives sci-fi listeners some poignant moments to ponder long after the credits end." --AudioFile magazine

"…a sensational project...." --Spine Magazine

“This is exactly how I like my techno-anxiety.... Happy bingeing!" --Audible, an October Editors Pick

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Another creative SF story, this time one by Blake Crouch who was the inspiration and curator of the Forward short series of futuristic Amazon originals.
A game designer becomes intrigued by one of the bit part non-player characters who began to act out of line with the programming. Destined to be murdered very early in the game, she started to try to run away. So she was rescued and brought out of the game to be studied.
This is a wonderful idea, visual and thought provoking, which accelerates as the story progresses - good ending, too. It felt far more like a complete novel than the novella it actually is. Having said that, I struggled with some of the concepts.

Narrated by Rosa Salazar with precision, clarity and good expression, she was a pleasure to hear and her individual voicing s helped identify and add depth to the characters. A good performance.
The longest of the stories in this excellent series, at a little over two hours, it makes a fine listen for a dull evening.

"Knowledge is just information that is subjective"

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This was great !Well it's (sci-fi) Blake Crouch so I wasn't expecting any less tbh! I dont do fiction on audible but this one I binged it with my morning coffee!
Reminded me of ex machina - a movie I really like anyway, the voice actress did a very good job and in general I loved it !

Amazing !

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what an introduction to this authors work , loved this story, from the video game concept to the terrifying possible realities of AI, this is definitely gonna be tough to heat as I move through the rest of the series

fantastic story and my favourite so far

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Gender-neutral pronouns are very confusing when speaking of singular as a plural especially when the character is a digital creation or an it, yes it is sexualized as a female for a storyline in a game if it had been a transgender character it would be more understandable; any way it ruined the flow of the story for a stupid reason.

A good story with a forced pronoun

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Other than the annoying and sometimes confusing use of ‘their’ and ‘they’ to avoid using Gender specifics, this is a fantastically engaging novella. ‘Their’ and ‘they’ suggests more than one person, so it’s difficult on the mind on occasions, but otherwise a highly recommended piece of work by Blake Crouch.

‘Wokeness’ creeps in slightly, but more thought provoking than virtue signalling.

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