The Cyborg Protocols

by Anthony Aidan

One hundred and sixty years after the appalling devastation of a global nuclear Apocalypse, two very different societies have emerged from the ashes. The dominant Federation is led by scientists become senators, whose forefathers used AI to create worker cyborgs to cope with the high radiation. The Alliance is a union of disparate enclaves, which have come together to defend themselves against the increasing aggression of the powerful Federation. The Alliance is made up of many isolated communities and twenty seven underground cities. Their people have suffered prolonged hardships, the devastation setting their society back many hundreds of years. Disillusioned by an increasingly autocratic Federation, three waves of defecting scientists have considerably bolstered the Alliance’s ability to fight their hardships and defend themselves against attacks.
Doctor Tom Fielding is the Federation's brilliant leading young scientist, a senator at twenty-three and tipped to become the President. He is determined to achieve the first transition of a human brain to a cyborg host. His sister is a fearless reporter, reluctantly agreeing to take on an emotionally sentient cyborg companion as part of a PR offensive to gain widespread acceptance of an increasingly cyborg dominated world. Extremely sceptical at first, she finds herself more and more dependent on Seb, as love blossoms between a human and her machine.
The earth is dying. The population of the Alliance continues to struggle to increase, beset by infertility problems. The population of the Federation has recovered, helped by the virtual eradication of disease. The senator class has sought to cling on to their privilege by introducing ‘Serenity’ to the water and food chains, leaving the people drugged and without purpose. The Federation has implemented a series of secret programs to forcibly reduce their own population to protect the earth's dwindling resources. Opposing them from within is the underground resistance movement, led by the fearless Imogen Stevens and her irascible on / off boyfriend, Clive Hendry. The Federation resistance combines with the increasingly sophisticated armies of the Alliance to offer a slim hope of defeating the highly sophisticated technological resources massed against them. All the players know there will be all-out war. The very existence of mankind hangs by a thread.

461 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 7, 2018

About the author

Worked in finance for twenty five years before deciding to write. I have travelled extensively and enjoy outside pursuits. I am married with three adult children and live in West Sussex.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long and winding road. It was probably too long and too winding, involving too many characters. That said, it was an interesting story, and the author does manage to tie things together. Some of the characters are relatable. Others are not fleshed out enough to make them memorable. While the time in which the book takes place is a set number of years after a specific event, I'm still not clear on how long that event is from today. That makes it impossible to decide if the technology mentioned makes sense. If your plot twists keep resulting from facts you haven't revealed previously, the reader is going to pick up on it and see it as a chep trick. Things like this made the overall effect somewhat less than ideal, so one star deducted.

When an author uses a slur for no discernible reason, it's an error in judgment. When he uses it twice, it tells you what he thinks about the group it pertains to. One more star deducted.

No stars deducted for the following. Using a spell checker is not editing. If you consistently type "though" when it is obvious you mean "thought," it gets noticed. If the locale is Euro-centric, with only a small connection to North America, but you talk about dollars, your readers are going to wonder why.