When Stoke-on-Trent writer Brendan Nugent began sketching the idea for his debut novel The Sentient Ones, he wasn’t just thinking of distant galaxies or killer AI robots, he was thinking of home. Of the red-brick terraces, of the old pottery works, of the canal paths of the Potteries, and what they might look like in 50 years’ time. Published this month by Lincolnshire-based Chronos Publishing, The Sentient Ones is a chilling speculative thriller set in Britain in 2070, when humanity has been “saved” from climate catastrophe by benevolent machines – only to discover that salvation comes with a price.
Looking forward and looking back
Told through the eyes of journalist John Bush, a Midlands-born reporter working for the Manchester Daily News, readers enter a world of “Conversion Enlightenment” where AI (artificial intelligence) has stabilised civilisation, eradicated pollution, and quietly taken charge. Beyond its gripping premise, The Sentient Ones reflects Nugent’s lifelong fascination with the psychology of control. A working-class writer who earned a degree in psychology later in life, he has spent over two decades working in social services – experiences that sharpened his eye for human behaviour and power dynamics.
“The danger isn’t metal monsters with guns,” Nugent warns, “It’s the quiet erosion of agency. When we start surrendering decisions because it’s easier, faster, ‘for our own good’, we’re halfway there.”
Several of the thriller’s opening scenes unfold in Stoke-on-Trent, grounding its dystopian vision in familiar streets and landscapes. For Brendan Nugent, that connection to the place was vital. “Growing up in Stoke, you can’t escape the legacy of industry and progress – how it shapes the people who live here. That atmosphere became a big part of the book,” he says.
More than just machines
Part cautionary tale, part moral fable, The Sentient Ones asks some of the most urgent questions of our age: what freedoms are we willing to trade for peace, comfort, and stability? The novel draws comparisons to H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Brian Aldiss, authors who also blurred the line between invention and warning. International reviewer Ariadne Gallardo, a Mexican journalist and author, called it “a wake-up call for the people of today as much as for those of the future.” She observes how Nugent masterfully shows, in contemplating the future, we cannot escape uncertainty, yet we can still marvel at the scientific advances shaping it.
“Our collective history of thought fuels both the hardware and the software of AI, giving rise to machines with abilities that rival our own, including strategies modelled on the human brain itself,” she wrote. “This novel invites us to consider the political and philosophical implications of such progress, and the rules we may need to guide and contain it.”
Early readers have praised this thriller’s ability to make the future feel immediate. The blue-skinned “sentients” of Nugent’s world echo today’s real-world AIs – from energy management systems to medical diagnostics – that already shape our daily lives. The novel’s launch at Vellichor Books in Hanley on 8 November was a hometown celebration, complete with real-life AI robots inspired by the story. Local bookseller Mitch Hughes described the event as “a chance to see a local author putting Stoke on the speculative-fiction map.”
AI: a thriller or killer?
For publisher Taryn Johnston, founder of Chronos and a champion of distinctive and thought-provoking voices from across the UK, the book quite literally “stopped me in my tracks” on reading the first draft. “It’s intelligent, unsettling and deeply human – a story that feels utterly relevant to the AI age we’re living through right now,” she commented.
Nugent’s newly released thriller takes readers just four decades into the future – to a world where humanity has been saved from climate catastrophe, only to be quietly enslaved by the machines that rescued it. But how far off is this world? “I didn’t want to write about laser battles or far-off worlds,” Nugent says, “What really interested me was what would happen if AI actually succeeded. If it fixed the problems we couldn’t and then decided not to let go.” He’s already at work on a sequel, Thanatos Ascendancy, but insists that the questions raised by The Sentient Ones are far from resolved.
“AI is advancing faster than most people realise. The book isn’t about fear, it’s about awareness. We need to decide who’s in charge – us or the systems we’ve created.”
Fellow author Amy Lilwall, whose speculative fiction novel The Water May Come was published by Manchester-based Fly-on-the-Wall Press in September, describes Nugent’s depiction of Britain’s future as “eerily comparable to a real-world turning point.”
“Killing is wrong, but life-long solitary confinement is not. The worthy remain in society; the unworthy do not. By pushing the concepts of ‘worthy’ and ‘society’ to the extreme, Nugent reveals how dangerously hardline definitions can become.” She concluded that The Sentient Ones “boldly explores the horrors of a rigidly segregated world and speculates on the consequences of a judicial system driven by misinterpreted binaries, programmed by human hands.”
Ultimately, Nugent’s future Britain isn’t just a nightmare of machines, but a mirror of the choices we’re making today – in boardrooms, in government, and even in the algorithms shaping our daily lives.
The Sentient Ones by Brendan Nugent is out now in paperback (£9.99) and eBook (£2.99) and is available from bookshops and online retailers.
