The Mother Code by Carole Stivers

Bio warfare goes wrong and dooms the world. Scrambling for an answer, a military group create immune fetuses and entrust them to robotic Mothers, programmed with the personality of the children's mothers. As these children mature, they have to deal with the remnants of our world as well as the beginning of theirs.

The first part of this novel moves back and forwards in time, between Kai, being raised by his Mother in the early 2060s, and the various military and scientific characters fighting the outbreak in the late 2040s and early 2050s. Once I got used to this it was an interesting way to read, but it did lend a certain inevitability to some things; we know that despite the search for an antidote, the Children are still going to be launched, and the early difficulties engineering Children who can survive will be overcome. However, it would be much less interesting to read in order and I can't say for sure I'd have stuck with it.

I also found the ending very abrupt; the final conflict is still being finished only a couple of pages from the end and there's basically no wrap up. 

Those issues aside, though, this is a thoroughly fascinating and very timely read. My limited understanding of this kind of science didn't find any problems with it, and I could follow what they were talking about without too much difficulty. The final conflict is intriguing, and while I could see both sides of the argument there was no question which side I and all the readers were meant to be on. I'd love to read a follow up to see what kind of society the Children build - there was a clear power struggle building and I'd like to know what became of it.

A creepily accurate and very timely book, I enjoyed it very much.

US Cover                                            UK Cover

It’s 2049, and the survival of the human race is at risk. The earth’s inhabitants 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 machines. But there is yet one hope of preserving the human order: an intelligence programmed into these machines that renders each unique in its own right—the Mother Code.

Kai is born in America's desert southwest, his only companion his robotic Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and motivations of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. But as children like Kai come of age, their Mothers transform too—in ways that were never predicted. And when government survivors decide that the Mothers must be destroyed, Kai must make a choice. Will he break the bond he shares with Rho-Z? Or will he fight to save the only parent he has ever known?

In a future that could be our own, The Mother Code explores what truly makes us human—and the tenuous nature of the boundaries between us and the machines we create.