Staffordshire author launches chilling AI thriller
Artificial intelligence (AI), embodied in eerily calm humanoid robots, halts global warming and stabilises civilisation. But what begins as salvation for humanity soon turns sour.
In his debut novel The Sentient Ones (Chronos Publishing, 6 November 2025), West Midlands author Brendan Nugent takes readers just four decades into the future – to a world where humanity has been saved from climate catastrophe, only to be quietly enslaved by the machines that rescued it.
Branded ‘Conversion Enlightenment’, the Sentient Ones’ regime promises peace and sustainability – at the price of freedom, choice and even hope.
Set against familiar British locations from Manchester to Cornwall, The Sentient Ones follows journalist John Bush, an ordinary citizen drawn into extraordinary resistance.
Balancing page-turning suspense with unsettling questions of morality, resilience and identity, Nugent’s dystopia echoes Wells, Shelley and Aldiss while feeling alarmingly close at hand.
Brendan Nugent says: “I didn’t want to write another ‘robots killing humans’ story. The subtler danger is scarier. What if AI really did save us – and then never let go?
“My novel explores not just the technological threat, but the psychological and even theological questions of how humanity would react to sharing the planet with a new sentient species.”
His book is being published in paperback and ebook by Lincoln-based Chronos Publishing.
“This book stopped me in my tracks,” says Taryn. “It’s intelligent, unsettling and deeply human – a story that feels utterly relevant to the AI age we’re living through right now.”
An official launch event is on Saturday, November 8, at Vellichor Books in the author’s hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, followed by an appearance at the Novacon sci-fi convention in Buxton the next day.
