Sea of Rust, by C Robert Cargill, Gollancz, RRP£14.99, 365 pages. Join our online book group on Facebook at FTBooksCafe. Subscribe to FT Life on YouTube for the latest FT Weekend videos.

There are no human characters in C. Robert Cargill’s latest novel, Sea of Rust. An intriguing subversion of the robot-apocalypse genre, the book takes place years after human beings have been ...