7th SIGMA

Welcome to the territory. Leave your metal behind, all of it. The bugs will eat it, and theyll go right through you to get it…. Dont carry it, dont wear it, and for gods sake dont come here if youve got a pacemaker.

The bugs showed up about fifty years ago—self-replicating, solar-powered, metal-eating machines. No one knows where they came from. They dont like water, though, so theyve stayed in the desert Southwest. The territory. People still live here, but they do it without metal. Log cabins, ceramics, what plastic they can get that will survive the sun and heat. Technology has adapted, and so have the people.

Kimble Monroe has chosen to live in the territory. He was born here, and he is extraordinarily well adapted to it. Hes one in a million. Maybe one in a billion.

In 7th Sigma, Gould builds an extraordinary SF novel of survival and personal triumph against all the odds.

A swarm of small, metal-eating, self-replicating machines has appeared in the desert southwest. They are attracted to and devour all metal—from bridges to pacemakers. This is the story of the people who still live in the territory, and of one boy who is rapidly becoming a man.