A dying AI specialist must outsmart sentient androids to get the cure she needs.
AI specialist Liz Price is determined to see sentient androids in her lifetime, but then she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hoping that her dream will be realized in the future, she arranges to be cryogenically frozen upon her death.
When Liz is revived years later, she expects to be cured. But sentient androids are taking humans and killing them for some unknown reason. They control the medical system, and they don’t treat serious illnesses.
A resistance group wants Liz to turn the androids back into mindless machines. They tell her that’s the only way to stop the androids, and the only way she’ll be cured.
Liz wants to live, so she agrees to work with the resistance. She secretly hopes she can reason with the androids, but then she finds out why they’re taking humans.
Sarah says:
Imagine that you’re on the verge of creating sentient machines, but then you’re diagnosed with terminal cancer and have only 6 months to live. This happens to Liz Price in Their Last Hope. She decides to be cryogenically frozen upon her death, hoping to see sentient machines when she’s thawed.
Years later, she’s unfrozen, only to find out that the world needs her help. Sentient machines exist, but they’re not at all what Liz expected. Even more shocking, the leader of the group who thawed her turns out to be her now grown-up daughter. She tells Liz that sentient androids control the medical system.
Liz’s condition has been stabilized, but if she wants to be cured, she’ll have to turn the androids back into mindless entities that aren’t sentient. Otherwise her condition will worsen and she’ll die again, this time without the option of being frozen.
Will Liz throw away her life’s work, or will she go against her daughter’s wishes and find another way to solve the problems created by sentient androids?
Their Last Hope is a standalone science fiction novel about artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. It has a strong secondary lesbian character.
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