From Goodreads.com: Welcome to the territory. Leave your metal behind, all of it. The bugs will eat it, and they’ll go right through you to get it…Don’t carry it, don’t wear it, and for god’s sake don’t come here if you’ve got a pacemaker.
The bugs showed up about fifty years ago--self-replicating, solar-powered, metal-eating machines. No one knows where they came from. They don’t like water, though, so they’ve stayed in the desert Southwest. The territory. People still live here, but they do it without metal. Log cabins, ceramics, what plastic they can get that will survive the sun and heat. Technology has adapted, and so have the people.
Kimble Monroe has chosen to live in the territory. He was born here, and he is extraordinarily well adapted to it. He’s one in a million. Maybe one in a billion.
September's book group selection.
In 7th Sigma, Gould builds an extraordinary SF novel of survival and personal triumph against all the odds
The premise of this one intrigued me: a future earth where US nano-technology got out of hand and created self replicating “bugs” that consume metal. They seem to be more prevalent in the Southwest than elsewhere in the States or world. The book also surprised me - I didn’t realize it was a YA book until after I started. So it goes with book group selections - I don't always read the blurb when we vote.
I enjoyed the simplicity of the plot and characters while some of the morality was a bit heavy handed. It relies on Japanese philosophy as taught through martial arts with some Buddhism thrown in. Christianity was portrayed as bad or evil. Our young hero, Kimble, a streetwise urchin who is picked up and taken under Sensei Ruth’s tutelage learns through hard work and hard lessons what it means to grow up in a harsh land where stepping on a ‘bug’ could mean immediate death, where men take the law into their own hands, and to rely on doing the right thing even if it might seem contrary to orders.
Morality aside, it was the world setting that really drew me in. Loved the idea of metal eating, self-replicating bugs. That to go out into the Territory with any kind of metal on or in your person could spell your immediate death. Clay, ceramics, plastic, cement reinforced with fibers, leather, Velcro…these spell a survival of sorts. And if the Territories aren’t for you, you can live behind the Barrier with all its modern conveniences.
But this isn’t about the Barrier. It’s about Kimble, life, and bugs.
I recommend this selection if you just want an enjoyable SF read.
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