This is the story of a wealthy New York couple in the near future. Wendy works for an advertising firm, and Michael works in finance. Everything is going great until their apartment is infested with bedbugs and they lose their savings when their investments tank. Wendy is approached by an unusual new client with political interests, and Michael attends a finance party feeling sorry for himself. From there, the two split paths and life goes haywire.

I liked the gentle sci-fi, all of which was integrated so well and seemed so plausible that those who aren't interested in sci-fi would still enjoy this as a work of literary fiction.

This is written in Michael and Wendy sections at the beginning and end, and in the middle we get a more general overview. The writing is great, but won't be to everyone's tastes. Especially in the Michael sections, the sentences are long and full of modifiers and pop culture references.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

-- This review is several years past the release date due to the many issues of 2020, but a huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early copy of the book.

This was a bit too depressing and bit too fatalistic for where I was in 2020 for me to fully enjoy the book. I would give the author another chance, but this book did not work for me.

Sensation Machines is incredibly well written, it constantly teetered on the edge of literature prose. I found so many quotable lines. I think this was the perfect blend of scifi and contemporary commentary. One book that I'll definitely be thinking about for some time to come.

This is a really interesting read. I found myself thinking about it for a long while after reading it. It centers around a couple in a failing marriage, one a former Wall Street trader who has lost all of the couple's money, and the other a marketers who is now working for a secretive company with a wide-reaching and scary ambition. Through the story of Michael and Wendy, the two members of the couple, the author explores many of the most pressing issues in society today. Highly recommended!

“The end my friend and here we are: the fall of Rome, the decline of derivatives, the rise of dildos made from real human skin like Hitler only dreamed.”

“Ricky sucked the string of cocaine-tinted snot back up his sinus canal and wiped his nose.”

A privacy-ending invention will change the world and accelerate the disintegration of the marriage of Wendy and Michael. The author spends a lot more time on Wendy and Michael than he does on the invention. For the invention to succeed, a proposal being considered by Congress must fail. Frankly, after Wendy “threw the crying cat across the loft” I couldn’t have cared less whether flesh eating bacteria ate Wendy’s face, and I wasn’t any fonder of Michael.

I am not sure why I finished this book, because from the beginning I wasn’t really enjoying it. I didn’t care for the writing style, and the author elected to include every social issue of the 21st century in a very heavy-handed way without any cleverness or particular insight. For example: The Economy “These people’s tax dollars had gone toward the previous bailout, and they’d been repaid with foreclosures and overdraft fees. And now their jobs had been replaced by bots or shipped abroad.” and Racist Cops “Quinn reminds himself that he is not a racist. He is doing this for reasons other than racially – motivated umbrage, he tells himself, as he uses his foot to lift the toilet seat and unzips his fly, freeing the long, skinny dick that all three women he’s slept with have noted for its resemblance to Quinn’s own face. He’s doing it for Gunther and Gunther alone. Why? Because a boy needs a dad, and a dad needs a job, and that job needs to pay more than eighty grand a year if that dad wants to keep up with hippie school tuition and alimony payments and still have money left to put food on the table and Wi-Fi through the airwaves, and pay for premium upgrades to Gunther‘s AR helmet, and if they don’t charge someone for the Cortes murder, then Quinn won’t get promoted, and worst case, he’ll be out on his ass.”

This book just wasn’t for me. 2.5 stars I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

DNF. I was intrigued by the satire at the very beginning, but it quickly became dry and boring to me. I think I am also tired of fiction about New York.

Maybe a little looser than it should be, a tightened up novel, with less disjointedness might have been slightly more enjoyable, but i still thought this was a good book. Mystery and other fragments all wave together to make a very enjoyable read!

This was a difficult book for me to get into because the writing felt a little cluttered at times but the characters were pretty interesting and entertaining. The inclusion of the murder mystery gave the book a nice turn into something I wouldn't have expected.

Sensation Machines is set in the near future and is a combination of satire, social commentary, and crime story. The story starts from two points of view, Michael and Wendy. Two well off Manhattanites whose marriage is crumbling as a result of a miscarriage and Michael losing their money in some bad investments. Michael is trying to find a way to replenish the money they lost (approximately 3 million) while Wendy is working on a project that can only be called data mining via a special suit the user wears that sends all kinds of data to a company that Wendy is working with who in turn sells it to companies for profit. The suit also influences your purchases using your own voice. Creepy, right?

The second part of the book introduces the murder mystery part when Michael's best friend Ricky is murdered. There are a lot of characters introduced in this part and it is hard to keep track of who is who. There is a bit of social commentary regarding government and police corruption as we see the police investigation of who killed Ricky unfold. The final part is Wendy in the aftermath of the unveiling of the suit and how her life is now.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, although a bit out of my usual reads. The majority of the characters are well rounded and the plot is drawn out really well. Given the curry state of the US, you can see how easily this hits close to home rather than if it had been published a year or two earlier. Thank you to Soho Press, author AdamWilson, and NetGalley for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This is kind of a difficult book to review. I wanted to gather my thoughts and produce something more coherent that exclamations of its genius and so took my time, but it never quite became crystalized, so I’m just going to ramble, like I tend to anyways. Ok, title first, the title refers to people as bodies, machines that look for comfort and avoid sharp corners of life, however futile their efforts might be. Life as lived viscerally and as such its occasionally a viscerally unpleasant/repulsing read, but very much in a car crash sort of way, where you just can’t look away. The main protagonists are Michael and Wendy Mixner, the well to do Manhattanites in crisis. Their marriage is stumbling after a stillbirth of their daughter, their finances are struggling with Michael recklessly misinvesting something like 3 million dollars, their personal ideologies appear at odds as Wendy takes on a new project for a new evilly charismatic boss. And this is all against the infinitely complicated sociopolitical scene set in the all too near future where society, addled by increased automation, is debating UBI (Universal Basic Income) and its alternatives, the latter of which is Wendy’s boss’s grand idea. There’s more to it than that, sociopolitically, it’s a terrifically complex, strikingly intelligent and soberingly plausible look at a world where justice isn’t just, where equality, equal opportunity and other excellent concepts have never taken off the conceptual stage in any way but rhetoric, it’s a world of manipulation of the lowest denominator where money talks loudest and exigencies of Mammon drive the abandonment of personal integrity. In other words it’s a frighteningly recognizable world, albeit more technologically advanced. And that’s all good and great and right along the lines of my love for dystopias of all kind, but that isn’t all, not even the main thing. Despite the compelling plot and subplots, including murder, the main attraction here is the author’s cleverness. I mean, this is by far the smartest book I’ve read in ages, the way he thinks, the way he turns phrases, his ideas…it’s all so erudite, intelligent, awesome. It’s the way I’d love to sound, the way I probably do to myself on a good day. But the author actually did that for 400 or so pages. Freaking genius, really. What this man has to say about the world, about society, about the future…it’s s just so (not to pun in a book that’s in no small way about all that lucre, but) on the money. There’s a certain droll cynicism to the entire thing, most appropriately so, and it just works so well. Though I don’t think it is a satire as such, it can be read as one, but it’s more profound than that, alarmingly so. An absolutely fascinating read, not an easy one, but excellent, very smart and extremely rewarding. Probably not to everyone’s liking, but it certainly worked for me. The UBI discussions were just an added bonus, a subject of personal interest. It wasn’t just the economics or politics, not at all, it’s a first class literary drama with excellent character development, plotting, etc. But the economic politics were probably the most striking aspect of this production. Great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

I thought this book was supposed to a dystopian-like novel, but I felt like I was reading about the world we currently live in. It was rapt with white privilege, economic crisis, police corruption and the idea of Universal Basic Income. Maybe had this been written or published well before Covid, I might have had a different outlook.

I felt as if the story line itself was very disjointed. There were many times when I really had no idea what I was reading or what was going on. Things that I think were meant to be character builiding,, but literally had nothing to do with anything i.e. Michaels obsession with Eminem. Because of the 'randomness' and bouncing back and forth, I felt like I couldn't really get to know any of the characters well enough to have sympathy for them.

I've seen a lot of positive feedback for this book, so I guess some people like this writing style, but it was not my cup of tea.

This is indeed a novel of ideas rather than a plot driven dystopian tale of a couple - Michael and Wendy- coping with changes in their economic status and the murder of Michael's friend Ricky. It's told, at least initially, by Michael and Wendy. Michael's a trader who lost all their money and Wendy is involved with data mining. Data mining that will be used, let's be honest, against many people and to change opinions. Is Universal Basic Income a good thing or bad? Project Pinky is hard to explain but it will make you think about some of the tech you have in your home. There's a big conspiracy going on and there are characters who might seem familiar. There's also the issue of Michael and Wendy's stillbirth, a new pregnancy, and an escape from Brooklyn. It's hard to explain this one, in part because there's a lot crammed in. The writing is occasionally a bit much (at least for me) but there are some gorgeous phrases. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I think this novel has a fantastic premise and the writing is smart and entertaining. That said, it's hard to say if readers should approach it as a satire or crime drama. A lot of questions remain unanswered and I prefer clearer resolutions.

Although flawed, this is a solid drama with lots of ideas and some unexpected turns. This author has written a lot of stories, and his talent and experience are apparent. This one seemed a little uneven and I wasn't always engaged, but for readers seeking a good writing style and well formed characters, plus a good overall plot, this will probably work. 3.5 stars.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

Timing is all when it comes to a publishing date, and this cautionary tale of speculative dystopia would have had a stronger impact had it been published a year earlier, pre-pandemic. However, since there are forces at work in the real world that render the dangers put forth here irrelevant, this can only be read as an entertainment, and it delivers on that very well.

“Broder liked her long, elegant nose with its flat bridge and nostril flare.”

I picked the sentence above more or less randomly to give you a flavor of this book’s style. The book is written from multiple points of view but every one of them is the point of view of someone who notices and passes judgment on their surroundings at a meticulously finite level. The style is the story here, for me. I was invited as I read to be the kind of person who notices things like noses.

“Wendy swirls her coffee like it’s wine and watches the models emerge from Makeup with contoured cheekbones and halos of hairspray, musk rising off the men who cross in silent formation like hunky monks or spa-bound angels wearing robes that shine white against tan and brown skin.”

That’s another random sentence from somewhere in the middle. I’m honestly very interested in this style of writing. What is it, Pynchonesque? Whatever it is I enjoyed it pretty well and if this kind of writing appeals to you then you will, as well.

If ever there were a case for three and a half stars, this is it.

Sensation Machines starts out strong and tight. Michael Mixner is a Wall Street trader who has invested badly. He's up to his eyes in debt and his credit has just run out. His lavish lifestyle is in trouble but he doesn't want to break the news to his wife Wendy. Meanwhile, Wendy knows they are in trouble and immerses herself in her work at a publicity agency as a form of escape. This is all set in a near future United States where traditional society and the traditional economy are collapsing; there's a growing political consensus for a Universal Basic Income; and technology is displacing more and more workers.

There's a real human drama unfolding as Michael and Wendy have to discover and explore their new situation; they need to work out how they relate to one another; they need to plan a way forward. Oh, and Michael drops into the narrative that his friend Ricky has been murdered.

Then, about a third of the way through, the camera pans back from Michael and Wendy's alternating narratives. The cast of characters increases exponentially in a bewildering array of far right political commentators, tech entrepreneurs, traders, advertisers, hangers on. These additional characters are not terribly well drawn and it's pretty difficult to keep track of who's who. They are all grotesque, greedy and seem to want to thwart one another for reasons that escaped me. Some of the plot lines descend into farce. It's as though Adam Wilson didn't know whether he was writing a crime novel, a satire or a character driven novel. This section - which is most of the novel - feels slack and choppy.

Finally, as a coda, we return to Michael and Wendy to catch up with them some time after the fateful days of the story. Trouble is, I had really lost interest in their story with some of the mad plotting and scheming in the middle. Did they reconcile? Did they split? Did they end up rich or poor? I know the answers because I read the book, but I'm not sure I really cared by the end.

This is a novel of ideas. Some of them, at least, remind me more than a little of Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers. It deserves credit for that. But I wish some of the narrative drive from the opening third could have carried on through to the end.