Going Zero
A Novel
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4.2 • 107 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
TWO HOURS TO VANISH.
ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE.
ZERO ALTERNATIVES.
Ten Americans have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. FUSION can track anyone on earth. But does it work?
For one contestant, an unassuming Boston librarian named Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than anyone imagines. When the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner…
From four-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten comes a breakneck, wickedly entertaining thriller for our times, a twisty, action-packed novel reminiscent of the best Michael Crichton technothrillers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In screenwriter McCarten's strong debut, Fusion, a Silicon Valley company led by flawed genius Cy Baxter, is competing for a $90 billion contract to provide the federal government with a massive new surveillance system, promoted as a public good but concealing several nefarious features. To test the system, Fusion picks 10 contestants from the public, gives each a two-hour head start, and promises anyone $3 Emillion if they can stay undetected for 30 days. One builds a hidden room in his house; another holes up in a storage locker; a third tries to blend in with the homeless. One contestant, Boston librarian Kaitlyn Day, does more than hide. On day 28, Kaitlyn stuns Baxter with a zinger: use Fusion's power to locate her lost husband, believed to have disappeared in Iran three years earlier on a CIA mission, or she'll reveal the company's deceptive promises to the government. McCarten taps into the current fascination—and revulsion—with modern advances in facial recognition, AI, and location data, though chase story fans may like more chase and less techno navel-gazing. This is an edgy, compulsively readable thriller.
Customer Reviews
Excellent!
This book read like a movie!! I loved it!!
An almost perfect thriller
At turns, it was an very engaging thriller, a musing about the ethics of privacy in the digital age, and a humorous satire of big tech and the cultural changes it has wrought. The only gripe I have is that the plot, which built to a near crescendo, faded a bit at the end. The ending reminded me of those of the cynical movies of the 70’s. The ending also leaves room for a sequel. I greatly enjoyed reading it.
From wow to no way
The book started off great. As long as it stayed a story about an ingenious person outwitting big tech it rocked. Then (spoiler alert) it veered into a story about whistle blowing and the evil CIA/Big Tech bad guys. I lost patience when a couple of big tech hackers downloaded the entire file storage records of the CIA, TSA, and FBI over the internet in a matter of a few minutes. Even to backup my photo archives (5tb) to a backup hard drive over a wired connection takes hours. Then they later erase it with the press of a key. No. To truly erase info it must be overwritten. More hours. The book went from wow to no way pretty quickly.