Influx
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4.3 • 398 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez imagines a chilling future where technological advances are held hostage by the government in this thriller that perfectly blends “nail-biting suspense with accessible science” (Publishers Weekly).
Physicist Jon Grady and his team have discovered a device that can reflect gravity—a triumph that will revolutionize the field of physics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control.
The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of sudden technological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger. Because the future is already here. And it’s rewards are only for a select few.
When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison housing other doomed rebel intellects. Now, as the only hope to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age, Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy—one that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With this terrifying thriller, Suarez (Kill Decision) provides further support for the proposition that he's a worthy successor to the late Michael Crichton. Scientist Jon Grady and his colleagues have just invented a device that can reflect gravity, a major breakthrough that has the potential to revolutionize physics. But Grady's moment of triumph is short-lived. A Luddite terrorist, Richard Cotton (whose group is winningly described as "a branch of militant Amish who had settled on the mid-1980s as their permissible technological level"), captures Grady's team and sets off explosives to destroy them and their creation. To Grady's surprise, he survives the blast, only to find himself in the clutches of a seemingly omniscient U.S. government agency, the Federal Bureau of Technology Control, which monitors innovations and assesses their "social, political, environmental and economic impacts with the goal of preserving social order." That brief requires the BTC to suppress advances, like the gravity reflector, for what it perceives as the greater good. Suarez once again mixes science and fiction perfectly.
Customer Reviews
Solid
Solid book- first I'd read of Daniel Suarez. Definitely in the Michael Crichton Technical Thriller genre. Highlights include a plausible future state technical premise (surrounding Gravity Waves) with a slight detraction (not uncommon to authors) related to "chatty" plot building (aka plot advances found in character dialogue), etc.
My biggest grievance with the book? How altogether doltish the arch-antagonist is. Without giving away plot points, I couldn't strike the vision that the arch-antagonis was, in fact, Mandark- from Dexter's Laboratory- fully grown. Everything about his unnuanced personality struck me as off, given his position within the BTC.
That's unfortunate as the first portions- including the time spent in prison- were all 5 star.
Outstanding!!
I picked up Daemon some years ago, when it was just published in paperback because the cover notes interested me. Thank God I did! I couldn't wait to read Freedom and have haunted the websites, bookstores and iBooks ever since, waiting for the newest release of Daniel Suarez.
Influx keeps the tradition alive with science, technology, philosophy, government, human foibles and weaknesses and the strength and dignity of mankind.
Read Influx, you'll love it. Then re-read Kill Decision, Daemon and Freedom slowly and maybe, if we are all very lucky, the next one will be right around the corner.
We've lost Mr Clancy but a truly worthy successor is alive and well in Mr Suarez and, like all true successors, he has moved beyond the paths left by his predecessors.
Keep up the good work! Thank you!
100% would recommend!
This book is very well written and the concept is incredibly interesting. If you're interested in science and technology, this book will definitely keep you hooked.