The robot Caretaker of Seattle Farm 0722 knows its work is important—it nourishes life, and the resulting harvest feeds the legacy humans, the ones the Masters care for and keep in Seattle. But when humans begin to make unauthorized incursions onto the Farmland, the Caretaker soon finds it has been cultivating more than it knew… and that some things were never meant to grow.Harvest is a … grow.
Harvest is a standalone short novella that takes place in the world of the Singularity novels.
Start the novel series with The Legacy Human (Singularity 1).
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HARVEST is the fifth short story in Susan Kaye Quinn’s young adult, post apocalyptic, dystopian STORIES OF SINGULARITY sci-fi series- a companion series to the author’s SINGULARITY series.
SOME BACKGROUND: Following the ‘Singularity’ that resulted in most of the world’s population transforming themselves into a hybrid known as the Ascended, the few remaining humans become what is known as the Legacy-the true descendants of humankind. Every year a ‘creative Olympics’ is held, and the winner is offered the opportunity to become one of the ‘ascended’, a human/robot hybrid but a human who sacrifices their very soul.
Told from first person perspective (Robot Caretaker) HARVEST follows one of the robot caretakers at the Seattle Farm 0722 as they struggle to make sense of the events occurring on the periphery of the farm. Several emergency notifications will alert our Caretaker to a possible intrusion whereupon they will discover the threats having been neutralized, threats that left behind family and friends.
HARVEST is a short story, revealing some of the inhumanity of a post apocalyptic world, a world in which humans struggle to survive. As the robots begin to develop a sense of self, sentient and cognizant of the world in which they live, human become collateral damage as they battle for the basic necessities to thrive.
Cute Story! Entertaining tale of a guardian for a legacy human food farm.
I received a free copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed it.
It’s been a while since I visited this world created by Susan Kaye Quinn, but this story was still easy to get into. It follows a robot called the Caretaker who takes care of a farm for legacy humans. Until one day the caretaker acts in a way it shouldn’t and this story tells you what happens next.
I like the way this one was written, how the caretaker really seemed like a robot and how it thought of certain things. How the events it witnessed were compared with what it knew and how somehow it grew to be something more. It was interesting and beautiful to see it come to care about a weed in the farm and how it remembered special events. To read the unemotional and to the point viewpoint of the robot somehow made the events more jarring and have more impact in a way.
It’s a short read, with a clear start and end. And while it’s short I think it’s exactly the right length for the story.
This can be read as a standalone, although it probably helps to have read the first book Legacy Human at least so you understand a bit of the world.
I sometimes find it a bit challenging to write reviews of short stories or novella. You’re reading along and then boom, it’s over. But Susan has written a powerful story and it’s amazing to me how she can write something with so much impact in so few words. This is a story that made me stop and think long after I finished the last page.
Susan’s books (e.g., her SciFi, Steampunk, YA) have taken me totally outside of my usual reading genres and I have loved everything I have read by her…. and I’m pretty sure I’ve read just about everything she’s written so far.
The Singularity series and the Stories of Singularity are amazing and I highly recommend them. You really should read them!
This was such a passionate story about a AI that just wanted to preserve life. That of a plant that would have been considered a weed and trampled out on the farm it worked on to a human that was caught on the same farm as a trespasser and would have been shot and composted, no questions asked, worker robots shouldn’t ask questions. But this AI has ascended to see that life was precious and needed to be protected. This another short story hit by Susan Kaye Quinn and I just adore this series it just keeps getting better, and I can’t wait for more.