The Future
-
-
4.1 • 94 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Power delivers a “page-turning” (Los Angeles Times), “propulsive” (The Boston Globe), “thrilling” (BookPage, starred review) tour de force where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.
Martha Einkorn never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she’s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry while spouting technological prophecy. Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What do they know about the future that Zhen doesn’t?
When Martha and Zhen’s worlds collide, an explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha’s relentless drive and Zhen’s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful—or it could herald the cataclysmic end of civilization.
By turns “playful, incisive, horribly relevant, and surprisingly hopeful” (Lauren Beukes, New York Times bestselling author of The Shining Girls), The Future unfolds at breakneck speed, highlighting how power corrupts the few who have it and what it means to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This sharp, satirical near-future dystopian thriller explores how climate change, monopolistic tech companies, toxic social media, and ever-widening social divisions might lead to the apocalypse. Three Silicon Valley billionaires determined to save themselves from global collapse purchase a clever algorithm that predicts when that crisis, whatever it may be, will happen. Meanwhile, a resistance movement is fighting behind the scenes to avert the looming catastrophe, drawing a survivalist influencer unwittingly into their plot. British author Naomi Alderman, author of The Power, makes this novel feel unnervingly realistic and often laugh-out-loud funny, as in the unending Very Online arguments over both when and in what form the end days will take. We were also pleasantly surprised by the flashes of optimism that peek through the story, making it seem like we may, in fact, have time to start fixing what’s wrong with the world. Both a think piece and a quirky thriller, The Future is almost impossible to put down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the kinetic latest from bestseller Alderman (The Power), activists attempt to wrest power from three CEOs after a near-future apocalypse. The executives are Lenk Sketlish, the survivalist founder of the Fantail social network; Zimri Nommik, a serial cheater who runs the logistics and purchasing giant Anvil; and Ellen Bywater, who heads Medlar Technologies, a leading PC company, and often carries on imaginary conversations with her dead husband. When the trio receive an early warning about a pandemic said to be worse than Covid, they board a private jet to a secret doomsday bunker. A parallel narrative follows a group that's been fighting for ecological and social change, among them Lenk's assistant, Martha Einkorn, who grew up in her father's survivalist cult; Albert Dabrowski, the ousted founder of Medlar; Zimri's wife, Selah, who wrote some of the code for Anvil; and Badger, Ellen Bywater's politically radical youngest child, who takes umbrage with a private early warning system for the über-rich. While Alderman's erratic chronological jumps can be hard to follow, the narrative is eminently quotable ("The only way to know the future is to control it," goes one line ready-made for a movie poster). The endless intrigue and surprising twists keep the pages turning.
Customer Reviews
The future
Great ending!
Interesting Prospect
Probably a lot of what we actually need right now to correct our course, removing power from those who don’t care.
An intriguing and inventive read
Sci-fi full of interesting ideas and page-turning twists. A mix of technology, power politics, religion, and thriller. A good read that kept me intrigued and thinking from cover to cover.