"Part prophetic dystopian page-turner, part romance, this wildly entertaining novel sees a few billionaires go to destructive extremes as they prep for surviving the end of the world."
Exploring where the world could well be headed in terms of tech, climate change, and the power the wealthy few have over the poorer, powerless many, Naomi Alderman’s The Future is incredibly smart, incredibly suspenseful, and incredibly entertaining.
Set in a near-future world, The Future is largely centred on a few billionaires who hold all the cards (i.e. money and power) when it comes to technology and having the resources to potentially survive the end of the world. In this world, it’s less a case of survival of the fittest, and more about survival of the richest … maybe.
Among the three billionaires in question are Lenk, “a powerful man who had built his career on the future” aided by his executive assistant, Martha, daughter of a cult religious survivalist leader.
Sparks fly when Martha meets Lai Zhen, a “semi-celebrity in her little survivalist corner of the online multiverse”. As Lai Zhen realises the billionaires might be preparing for the imminent end of the world, there’s a domino effect of global disasters, just as she and Martha independently realise they might have succumbed to that weird thing called love: “There is a thing in human life that can never be predicted or controlled. It is dangerous and terrifying; it destroys your life and fucks up your plans.”
Sharp and audacious, The Future is a thrilling, thought-provoking wild ride of a read, with the suspenseful story peppered with posts from survivalist forums. Add to that a shivery sense of conspiracy, and a killer question at its core (“The question is whether there might be one good man in Sodom”) and The Future amounts to an exhilarating triumph.
| Primary Genre | Dystopian and utopian fiction |
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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.The Future features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Dystopian and utopian fiction, General Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Science fiction: near future, Speculative fiction, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Science fiction: apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, Technothriller, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes, Star Books, Recommendations
The Future is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Future was written by Naomi Alderman and published by Pocket Books
The Future has 496 pages
