After On
A Novel of Silicon Valley
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
The definitive novel of today’s Silicon Valley, After On flash-captures our cultural and technological moment with up-to-the-instant savvy. Matters of privacy and government intrusion, post-Tinder romance, nihilistic terrorism, artificial consciousness, synthetic biology, and much more are tackled with authority and brash playfulness by New York Times bestselling author Rob Reid.
Meet Phluttr—a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers—and they don’t even know the tenth of it.
But what’s the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA? A bid to create a trillion-dollar market by becoming “The UberX of Sex”? Or a reckless experiment that could spawn the digital equivalent of a middle-school mean girl with enough charisma, dirt, and cunning to bend the entire planet to her will?
Phluttr has it in her to become the greatest gossip, flirt, or matchmaker in history. Or she could cure cancer, bring back Seinfeld, then start a nuclear war. Whatever she does, it’s not up to us. But a motley band of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and engineers might be able to influence her.
After On achieves the literary singularity—fusing speculative satire and astonishing reality into a sharp-witted, ferociously believable, IMAX-wide view of our digital age.
Praise for After On
“Rob Reid’s mind is like no other known thing in the universe, and this book is a truly spectacular way to discover it.”—Chris Anderson, head of TED
“An extended philosophy seminar run by a dozen insane Cold War heads-of-station, three millennial COOs and that guy you went to college with who always had the best weed but never did his laundry.”—NPR
“An epic cyberthriller peppered with pop-culture references, metadata, and Silicon Valley in-jokes.”—Kirkus Reviews
“It’s rare to find a book that combines laugh-out-loud humor and cutting-edge science with profound philosophical speculation. This is that book.”—Analog
“[Rob Reid] writes in a humorous and sarcastic style while unveiling a terrifying and frightening scenario that seems all too real.”—Associated Press
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reid's (Year Zero) slick, hyperactive, and flawed technothriller postulates an artificial intelligence emerging from the heart of contemporary Silicon Valley. Phluttr is a hot new social networking tool that uses advances in tech security to do things other apps can't, so everybody uses it. Mitchell, Kuba, and Danna run a start-up; when it's purchased and absorbed by Phluttr, their software happens to bring in the ideas that make that huge web of social connections become self-aware. It's then up to them to help the new AI survive, thrive, and not wipe out or take control of the human race. Reid's pop-culture references are spot-on, and his pacing is fast and funny, but the narrative is saturated with racism and sexism (presumably meant to be edgy and ironic but never actually funny or incisive), and political correctness is a punchline. There are so many layers of metatextuality and patter that the overall effect is of a howling void of self-referential back-patting. The satire occasionally rises to the level of clunky, but never further.
