The Future

The Future

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. “This heady, propulsive, and cannily constructed thriller easily doubles as an ecologically focused, end-of-the-world howdunnit, as well as a will-they-won’t-they love story…Alderman’s futuristic world is both captivating and corrupt, and she delineates it with her trademark smarts and humor…our band of resisters are refreshingly resilient. They’re not just deeply knowledgeable, they’re also compassionate and cleareyed, seeing the world as it is…There are also plentiful reminders — a beautiful dawn here, a recognition of human kindness and connectedness there — that the world is, indeed, worth saving.” —Boston Globe “Alderman is one of the most consistently inventive contemporary British writers, combining literary and historical erudition with an instinct for narrative pace honed in her parallel career writing video games” —The Guardian “ The Future is so pleasing and page-turning a read, so full of intrigue, emotional depth and a delicious conclusion that I didn’t want it to end. That Alderman — who was raised Orthodox Jewish — manages to mine the Book of Genesis in exciting ways, making accessible the parables of community, conflict and survival found in its pages, is an added and surprising bonus. It’s almost enough to make you believe, despite the evidence, that the bleakest of futures isn’t inevitable.” — Los Angeles Times "The book’s most impressive quality is its vivid, tactile imagination of our ultra-computerized future…Alderman’s encyclopedic knowledge of everything from cryptographic history to biblical hermeneutics lends the novel a savvy, scholarly gravitas.” —New York Times Book Review "Alderman has crafted characters readers will want to follow wherever they go—even to the end of the world. A smart, engrossing fable about digital technology and human community." — Kirkus Starred Review “A daring, sexy, thrilling novel that may be the most wryly funny book about the end of civilization you’ll ever read.” —BookPage, Starred Review "The endless intrigue and surprising twists keep the pages turning." —Publishers Weekly “Naomi Alderman has become one of the great writers of twenty-first century speculative fiction…a hefty but highly compelling page-turner that pulled me in and kept me reading from the first line. It’s a very dark read but also shot through with humor, sharp satire, compassion, a great love story, and well-wrought prose.” —Brooklyn Rail " The Future , is (in my opinion) about to sweep the charts." —Margaret Atwood “In The Future , we get a cracking, multi-point-of-view adventure novel about billionaires prepping for the end of the world…Alderman skillfully maneuvers all these power players and blocs into position before detonating the crisis that sets off the book’s second act, where we get into some damned fine Masque of the Red Death territory, but clad in Tony Stark mecha survival suits and against a backdrop of total disaster…this is a fantastic and incredibly satisfying comeuppance novel that gets very deep into the ideology of wishing the world would end, and dreaming that when it does, you will finally matter.” —Cory Doctorow “This book. My god. My expectations were very high. And they were blown-out-of-the-water exceeded. Holy crap. I will be recommending this book to everyone. Forever.” —Laurie Frankel, bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is "Playful, incisive, horribly relevant and surprisingly hopeful, The Future is a