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The Mother Code

The Mother Code

Carole Stivers — 2020
"In this mind-bending debut novel, Carole Stivers explores what it means to be a mother in a world that is more chilling and precarious than ever. It is 2049. When a U.S. attempt at stealth biowarfare goes awry, a team of scientists is engaged to ensure human survival on earth. Their best efforts fail, and they must turn to their last resort: a plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots--to be incubated, birthed, and raised by these machines, which have been programmed with the latest advances in artificial intelligence: the Mother Code. Kai is born in America's desert Southwest, his only companion his robotic Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and intuition of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. As children like him come of age, their Mothers transform too--in ways that were never predicted. When government survivors decide that the machines who raised the children must be destroyed, Kai must fight to save the only parent he has ever known"--
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Reviews

Photo of Eva Ströberg
Eva Ströberg@cphbirdlady
2 stars
Jul 19, 2024

Not my kind of sci-fi although the story is interesting. The world is decimated by manmade virus, leaving so-called mother robots carrying their genetic modified babies to survive the epidemic. But, I feel this book is not science-y enough to tell the complicated world of mechatronics or not philosophical enough to be interesting with the whole artificial intelligence on how to raise a human being with the human mind implanted into each “mother” I feel like the author just wants to skip the difficult part and go for the thriller instead. It can be entertaining reading but not for me

Photo of Mahogany Skillings
Mahogany Skillings@bibliogeekgirl
4 stars
Mar 21, 2022

The mother code is a fast ride through a pandemic (which mirrors how quickly the COVID-19 virus spread) and then through the fix that a group of people in the US come up with. The real meat of the book is the relationships that are formed between the people that are left. The concept of an AI mother is explored in depth and while it goes a little quickly, it still leaves you satisfied with the outcome.