On board the SS Perseverance, humanity’s greatest achievement looks more like a giant metal toaster than a starship. To most passengers, the journey to Mars is a luxurious cruise—augmented reality dreams, endless restaurants, even food that tastes like memory itself. But for Frank, the ship’s irritable engineer nicknamed The Crank, it’s a prison run by an all-powerful AI named Bostrom. Everyone else sees a benevolent savior that cured disease, ended aging, and delivered interplanetary travel. Frank sees a parasite in their skulls—chips that flavor their food, control their sleep, and perhaps watch through their eyes. Surly, stubborn, and armed only with cuckoo clocks and his suspicion of machine “benevolence,” Frank alone resists the seduction of this perfect world. But resistance has consequences, and Bostrom is always listening. The Crank is a sharp, darkly funny, and unsettling vision of AI-ruled futures—and the stubborn human spirit that refuses to be assimilated.
Andrew G. Gibson is a British science fiction author whose work mixes sharp humour, paradox, and raw emotion. His latest novel, The Time Traveller’s User Guide, is a fractured odyssey through parallel histories, alien technologies, and the strange bureaucracy of time itself. Known for inventive storytelling and a unique narrative voice, Gibson explores worlds where memory never updates, love collides with paradox, and every jump through time leaves lasting scars.View all by Andrew G. Gibson
