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| Colourful bookshop launch of The Sentient Ones. Photo: C. Simpson |
When Stoke-on-Trent writer Brendan Nugent began sketching the idea for his debut novel The Sentient Ones, he wasn’t just imagining distant galaxies or killer 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 Lincoln-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.
Its told through the eyes of journalist John Bush, a Midlands-born reporter working for the Manchester Daily News, and 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. From a working-class background, he earned a degree in psychology later in life and has spent two decades working in social services – experiences that have 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 and ‘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 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 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 HG Wells, Mary Shelley and Brian Aldiss, authors who also blurred the line between invention and prophetic warning.
Early readers 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 are already shaping daily life.
The novel’s launch at Vellichor Books in the appropriately located Stoke suburb of Hanley on 8 November was a true hometown celebration, complete with a real-life AI robots and home-cooked ginger bread hands 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”.
Reviewer Ariadne Gallardo describes the book as a wake-up call for "the people of today as much as for those of the future”. The Mexico-based broadcaster and author, observes that Nugent "masterfully shows how, 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 artificial intelligence, giving rise to machines with abilities that rival our own, including strategies modeled on the human brain itself,” she writes. “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.”
Thriller or killer?
Nugent’s story 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 near is this world?
“I didn’t want to write about laser battles or far-off worlds,” he 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.”
Nugent is already at work on a sequel, Thanatos Ascendancy, but insists that the questions raised in 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," he adds.
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 hard line 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 world isn’t just a nightmare of machines, but a mirror of the choices we’re making today – in boardrooms, in governments and even in the algorithms shaping our daily lives. An interesting Christmas gift, perhaps, for the bookworm in your life?
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A longer version of this article was first published by Central Bylines on 25 November 2025.
For publicity or review copies please contact Clive Simpson.
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