No one does the end of the world as humanity knows it like Naomi Alderman (The Power). Billionaires, AI, and apocalypse cults all receive interrogation in The Future, her mind-twisting novel of how the world ends, and how far someone might go to save it.
In the near future, three billionaire tech execs board a plane after receiving an exclusive notification that societal collapse is imminent. They will escape with their families to lavish private bunkers while the rest of the world metaphorically burns.
Celebrity survivalist content creator Lai Zhen is unsuccessfully fleeing a gun-wielding assailant at a Singapore mall when a mysterious software named AUGR activates on her phone. The program's instructions save her life but Zhen is left with questions about who created it, how it got onto her phone, and who wanted her dead badly enough to send an assassin after her. She goes on the run, but even with help, staying a step ahead is tricky when the pursuer is unknown. Zhen has to wonder if her situation has to do with her elusive former lover Martha Einkorn.
Martha escaped at a young age from an apocalypse cult controlled by her father and used her unconventional skillset to become the personal assistant to a billionaire social media mogul. Her exposure to an elite class bent on controlling the future shows her that if her father's methods were wrong, his warnings were not. As the world frays at its seams, Martha and a trusted handful of collaborators hatch a plan that may save it, or take them and Zhen down with it.
Alderman embeds ethical debates about data mining, AI, and wealth into the plot structure of a thriller for a smart, thought-provoking read with the feel of an action blockbuster. Adrenaline-soaked fight and chase scenes rub shoulders with Internet forum digressions on what the book of Genesis has to say about how to survive the world. Zhen and Martha's mysterious and complicated romance adds an element of tenderness and a more personal level of suspense. The narrative centers queer and BIPOC characters, and Alderman resists the temptation to make her billionaire characters one-dimensional villains, instead rendering them as fully realized and deeply flawed. "We are all falling, all the time, from the half-understood past to the unknowable future," the narrator says. Alderman presents readers with a future that feels terrifying, inevitable, and ultimately within humanity's power to grasp and correct. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: Naomi Alderman's smart, pulse-pounding technothriller asks how the world ends, and how far someone might go to save it.