Captivating dystopian story as a commentary about society’s current destructive path

I enjoyed this fictional account of the not too distant future based on what the world, its people, societies, and the planet itself, currently looks like. It certainly made me think, validated some of my concerns and gave me lots of new things to reevaluate. I would definitely recommend this book.

At the beginning, the story is told through multiple POVs and, as a result, it started off choppy with little cohesive flow to it. It was confusing and felt as if the reader is dropped in mid-story. This writing style made it hard at first to follow the storyline or differentiate between the characters. But hold on because at about 10% the story gets a more consistent flow by a rewinding of the storyline to a past point and then walking us back to the “event” that occurs at the beginning of the book. This change definitely upped my investment in the storyline and my willingness to keep reading the book.

Once the story passes 10%, it is much less choppy and becomes an engaging read and an interesting commentary about income disparity, corporate greed, technology and the resulting harmful consequences to society and the planet. But it is not non-fictional preaching. The story was well written and included witty dialogue, three dimensional characters, and an engaging storyline. The main plot is centered around three tech billionaires (Lenk, Ellen, and Zimri), the companies they run (obvious parallels to Meta, Apple and Amazon), and four other people who orbit around these billionaires (Martha, Albert, Selah, and Badger). The final character is a fifth person (Lai) who is an influencer and a survivalist who has some moments with one of the four which pulls her into the event. The author uses current events, bible references, a past cult, and future projecting to lead the reader to the what if….what if….What if we try to correct course. What if we don’t. “There is a trajectory to human affairs. At a certain point, things become inevitable.”

After the story catches back up to the event, the story moves quickly to its unexpected/expected conclusion. The book, particularly in its middle portion includes some powerful language and imagery that elicited a multitude of different thoughts and feelings.

There’s pessimism - “Enclosures were justified in the name of efficiency: take all those little strips of common land and put them together and you could farm them with bigger plows and single crops. You could really achieve something. And they did; they made a lot of money for people who were already rich and powerful, and none of that wealth went back to the poor. They took something that used to belong to everyone and found a way to make it theirs.” “That’s what these social media and big technology companies have done. They’ve found a way to siphon off something that no one used to be able to own. They invented a new kind of fence to make a new kind of enclosure. …[They] have taken something that used to belong to each of us, put it together into useable data chunks, and used it to become very, very rich.” “We just have to stop letting a few people use what belongs to all of us to make themselves richer and richer.”

There’s optimism tinged with pessimism - “We have no shortage of good projects; there are thousands of people working on these things already and they are proven and scalable. The reason you feel despairing about this and think it’s impossible … is because they want you to think it’s impossible.”

There’s realism - “The future calls us on one painful step at a time and the first rule of life is to survive.”

There’s tentative hope - “There is a beautiful world on the far shore, where we’re not destroying all the species anymore and our cities are clean and beautiful and full of wild birds, and our cars are all electric and all shared, and the streets are safe for kids to play in, and we get to keep TV and the internet and concerts and ball games and all that good stuff, and fine, we’re eating mostly vegan food but it’s good, and if we can just get through the pain barrier as quickly as possible, then we’re there.”

Finally there’s pure hope - “It is morning again and I am standing in the sunshine at last.”

Definitely read this book. Think deep thoughts. And maybe work toward a different what if. “No state is perfect; no utopia exists but that it leaves someone out. All we can be is alert, like Fox, to the changing winds. To ask ourselves in each new situation: What would we hate anyone to do to us? And: Who have we forgotten? To exist in motion, falling forward, trying to bend our own histories toward what is fair and kind, what is sensible and good. We will keep failing, but final success was never the point.” 4.5 stars.

What woman ( and I’m guessing many enlightened men) didn’t love the author’s previous book The Power? Alderman could have written an appliance manual next and I’d be eager to sign on.. Happily this is no appliance manual. The publisher’s summary gives you a fair assessment: “ a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.” but that doesn’t tell the half of it. There were times while reading this I thought my head would explode either from the overload of technology or the end times anxiety or the crosses and double crosses of the plot..
If the previous title was The Power, I’m renaming this The Powerhouse!
So many complex characters combining good and not-so-good qualities. So many situations mirroring the world as we know it today. And so many ethical decisions that leave the reader wondering how you would respond. Calling the story a heist diminishes the significance of the scheme created by this group. The ultimate goal is always to reframe human society to make it healthy and fulfilling for people as they find their rightful place in the natural world. It is great fun to see altruistic smart people put a plan into effect and because they are far smarter than I, there were twists along the way I didn’t see coming, all due to the author’s great writing..
And most significant of all (and no spoiler) is Alderman’s hint at the end that the story is not yet over.

In The Future, the world is about to end.

This is literally true of Alderman's book, but it's also a sentence that would make logical sense to me if someone approached me on the street and whispered it in my ear. The world is flooded and on fire and at war, and things feel apocalyptic, and so the beginning of this novel, in which 3 tech giants get on a private plane because they've been alerted (before anyone else) that the world is ending and they should evacuate to their cushy private bunkers, felt a little too real. And maybe that is our future (Bezos definitely has a bunker, right?), but the rest of The Future makes the argument that assuming the end is nigh may just be a psychological trick we're using to shortcut the unpleasantness of uncertainty. For so many of us, a known end is more comfortable than an unknown one, even if the known option is terrible. What makes Alderman's characters so compelling is their inextinguishable hope, and their willingness to use the levers they have access to to change what they can.

Alderman wrestles with big questions in this novel (my favorite being, "Will we leave the world or will the world leave us?"), and certainly it's up there with The Children's Bible for the way it made me reimagine the end times. The things I appreciate most about The Future, though, are narrative, not ideological. I love Alderman's depiction of the queer romance between a survival influencer and a former cult member turned Big Tech bigwig. I love her rendition of a survivalist site called Name the Day, where people fight in the comments section about what board a comment belongs on (strategies? Old Testament prophecy?). I love the puzzle of the novel, the way I was never quite sure what people were plotting. And if I didn't love the neatness of the ending, it's perhaps because I'm still more of a cynic than I'd like to be.

Long story short, this is a top book of 2023 for me. Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC!

I loved this book. It's smart, prescient, relevant, and as twisty as the path of a samara seed.

There were times when I wondered where we were going. It felt like following the illumination of a short-range flashlight in a pitch-dark forest at times, unable to see a clear path and wondering why we were in this neck of the woods. But it all came together in the end, like a well-designed labyrinth intent on directing all those lost in its maze to the same end.

I'm overusing the similes here, but suffice to say that I think this is a book well worth reading, especially in today's world.

I really liked this book, but I'd be curious about what the general public will think. I've worked closely with social media and technology a number of years, so a lot of the these ideas in here seemed very cool to me, personally.

For instance, quotes like this one: "That's where we are right now with the media and the internet: stuck inside a cave with the worst person we know, finding increasingly degrading things to do to each other and feeling righteous while we do them." (Hello, Twitter).

Building off of these feelings, the book kicks off a brilliant premise that I can't really go into here without giving away spoilers. Let's just say it involves an intricate plan to save humanity involving a fictional group of big tech players. The plan is super smart and, given how it's set up, makes a lot of sense. (Although the implementation is complex as hell).

Honestly, this story is dense (but I dug it, personally.) However, the characters are enjoyable (special thanks to Alderman for featuring more female power players than you'd find in real life) and the plot moves along at a rapid pace. At first Lai Zhen seemed not to fit into the plot as much, but eventually her characters arc makes sense.

This is a complicated caper (maybe that's too light of a word? this is about saving humanity) but this book ties up every single loose end. (Maybe too tidy?) It's quite the writing trick to juggle this kind of complex plot and bring everything end for a solid landing.

Ultimately the Future is about the battle between love, compassion and coexistence, versus hubris, wealth and control. The book is firmly rooting for the former in quotes such as this one: "The only future we ever own resides in our trust in others, their trust in us."

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I had previously read Alderman's The Power and had a few preconceived notions about this book. Silly me. I loved The Power, but The Future was just so so so different! (in such incredible ways!)

I loved how the story unfolds... back and forth a bit in time. Alderman reveals bits and pieces carefully... never too much, but just enough. I had a very hard time pacing myself to read this story (and I stayed up until almost 3AM to finish it... so that pacing did not work out so well!)

The story led me down such fascinating paths... and was profoundly compelling. But the ending... oh.my.gosh!! I never, ever saw that coming! Brilliant!

If you liked The Power, you will LOVE The Future! I highly recommend! Really... read it! I cannot stop thinking about it!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC. This book will be published on November 7, 2023.

In the not so distant future the world as we know it is close to disaster. Three tech giants have decided that they want to flee to their underground bunkers before things get bad though it could be easily argued that their technology sped up the earth's demise. But they don't know everything about their technology.

This is a philosophical journey that delves into human nature, how much we can control with technology, and also slightly about how religious narratives can shape how we view the world.

The premise of this book was interesting and I enjoyed the twist within the book. The characters were somewhat one dimensional, and the whole tie in with religion (Abraham and Lot) was weird and offputting. The pre-apolocalypse and survival genre is also not my normal genre of choice to read.

There are many things happening in this book as well as many characters which I ended up having to make little notes along the way to keep up. There are sections in a forum format that I did not enjoy how they were executed. While not a fan of the book I did see relevance in how it parallels many things happening in our world currently in regard to things such as data mining and technological advancements. The Future is coming and this gives a plausible outlook to why that could be.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This wavered between 3 and 4 stars for me. I really enjoyed the author’s previous novel and found this also raised important questions about our society.

We follow three corporate giants and the people who orbit them, in an often scathing commentary on greed, the environmental crisis, and our own willingness to prioritize ease and immediacy over the common good. Set in the not so distant future, this sci-fi adjacent, post-apocalyptic (maybe?) glimpse into a world of information overload, social media manipulation, and technological “advances” pulls back the curtain on what our own future could look like. It also gives us a vision of how different that future might be for those with the wealth and opportunity to create their own escape hatch from a crumbling world.

I found the plot compelling and the subject matter thought provoking, even if I felt the character development was a bit weak. The author demonstrated a knowledge of subjects ranging from AI to the Bible to create a well thought out story that I’ll be turning over in my mind for some time to come.

So good! This one really kept me turning pages and guessing at what was going to happen. Scary in the sense that I feel that we're moving (if we're not already there) toward the future described in the book. Excellent storytelling.

This was actually really cool, and I like the writing style. The pacing was alright once I got about a third into it. I’ll probably read this authors other works, too. Very impressed.

There is a lot to love about this 5 star read. It’s hard to review because there is so much going on and I just loved it all. It is insightful - in fact I kept having to stop and read parts aloud to my husband because I wanted to share the awesome and my ebook is full of highlighting. The story jumps between character viewpoints and online chat group postings as the impending (or already here?) apocalypse is debated and prepped for. We get many viewpoints from religious back-to-the-earth preppers to multi-billionaire tech bunker builders. From survivalist vloggers to nihilists. And it’s also really funny. There is a mystery/thriller vibe to the story but with philosophical tangents. The near future Alderman creates feels all too realistic.I love that this book grapples with questions of technology/race/religion/climate change without being preachy about it. What is the proper use of technology? Of wealth? What is community? What is connection? What exactly is survival? And as dark as this book can be at times there is a thread of hope that runs throughout and there is really only one character I can think of that I saw no redeeming value in.
Thanks to Netaglley and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was captivating from the jump. It’s so creative and thoughtful. I loved the fresh spin on Sodom and Gomorrah exegesis. The story gripped me and kept me turning pages for the first half- it’s fresh and high tension. The second half, not so much. It was too long, too much exposition, too much of the author’s opinion. It’s an opinion I tend to agree with but in the end, it’s belabored. So this is 3.5 rounded up for creativity. Queer rep: two of the main characters are lesbians, and a third is non-binary.

Short summary: The future of the world is dire. And mostly in the hands of 3 tech billionaires. A few well positioned souls band together to attempt to save it. If they don’t succeed humanity ends as we know it…

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley. ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

Received an ARC from Netgalley and I was super excited to get into this one because I really, really enjoyed The Power. I was absolutely hooked for the first third of the book, Alderman did a great job crafting the dystopian tech overlords at the core of the story. However, this just didn't land for me in the way The Power did. I will definitely be recommending it to fans of Alderman, but it doesn't quite have the same bite. Maybe I just bought in too easily to the idea of Amazon-Meta-Twitter leader stand-ins having survival bunkers and steadily marching the world to crisis to please shareholders.

While The Power was brutal and bleak, yet hopeful, The Future felt too optimistic in a way that left me cold. I suppose it's nice to read something by someone who has some hope for the world and the possibility of goodness in the hearts of man but that simply couldn't be me.

Well. I don’t like Alderman’s view of the future at all lol.

Truthfully, the scariest part of the book is how plausible it is. It is not at all hard to imagine a few billionaires doing some of the things in this book – and I can actually imagine that a certain pasty supervillain billionaire who shall remain unnamed is already doing a few of the things in the book that manipulate social media.

I enjoyed most of our characters – Badger most of all – and definitely enjoyed trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t.

It’s a mind bender of a book and an excellent read!

• ARC via Publisher

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster publishing for an eARC of this book.

I am a huge fan of Naomi Alderman's work "The Power" and am a fan of science fiction. Thus I was super-enthused to dive into this work.
Unfortunately by the end I was irritated, bored, and glad it was over.

The Pros:
1. This book explores the future of the world we live in today - computer tracking and monitoring our daily lives, data mining our online activity, increasing environment disasters, super-bugs, the ultra-rich and what they may or may not be researching and developing, etc. Concept that I'm sure many of us how thought a great deal about in the past few years. This book explores the gamut in good and bad ways.

2. If you like twists and turns, lies, betrayal, and survival, this will sate your appetite though it will leave you a bit dizzy keeping track of it all.

3. Several chapters are done in a "forum" style that adds some flavor to the storyline and an undercurrent to the main storyline.

The Cons:
1. I understand the effort that goes into publishing a book but to be honest this story read as if the author sat down, started writing, finished the book without re-reading, and sent it off. Even the chapter headings look like placeholders. Towards the end of the book instead of thinking "aha, that's why that chapter/event/conversation was relevant!" it was "a third of these chapters could be cut and it wouldn't matter."

2. No stated timeline. From chapter to chapter you could be a month in the past or three decades or years in the future or all three in one chapter without any reference for how to view it.

3. Too many shallow characters such that the reader never comes to truly value them and all of them unlikable for one reason or another. Ultimately Martha and Lai get the most narration and back story but I almost wish maybe the story had scaled back on them to bring the others more to the forefront. It can be done well "The Power" had four main characters and wove their storylines together expertly.

The Inaccuracies:
1. (Note: the following quote might be changed once the book is published). In one of the "forum" style chapters - the poster, who is supposedly super familiar with Scripture states concerning Abraham and Lot in Genesis 13 write the following:
"But they argued. Genesis doesn't say about what."

Um.. anyone can simply Google to see that's not true - Genesis DOES say about what:
"Genesis13:5 Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents. 6 Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. 7 And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock."
Pretty straightforward, don't you think?

2. Further down it gets even worse saying Lot and Abraham probably hurled obscenities at each other and hated each other but again straight from Genesis 13:8
"So Abram said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are brethren."

May seem small but the whole chapter is essentially trying to make a point from a false story.

Person irritations:
1. Do publishing companies give a $100 bonus each time the F-word is used? A double bonus if it's repeated multiple times in a paragraph? How often in your life do your friends and colleagues say "F- Me" every time something interesting happens? Or "F- you" if they don't like something someone said? Doesn't sound realistic, does it?

2. Are you constantly wondering about the sex lives of the characters you are reading about? Do you want it brought up constantly and in detail repeatedly? Do you want their sexual orientation to be a main character trait? Yeah, me neither, but here we are.

Conclusion:
I'll state again, I understand the work that goes into a publication and perhaps this just wasn't for me, but I won't be recommending it to anyone. It would have been a DNF if I wasn't reviewing it. Sorry.

Power is the key! Feminist values of women learning to access, gain and utilize power from different sources! Becoming the dominant sex/being! This dystopian novel gives you much to think about. Dealing with real present and future challenges/concerns. Climate change, natural resources and cultural/political issues and the ramifications of negative actions or lack of actions!

** spoiler alert **
I received a (digital) ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After reading The Power, I was excited for Naomi Alderman’s newest novel, The Future. I enjoyed parts of the book - particularly (as a lifelong student of the Bible) the interludes that focused on the story of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19) and the continued references to that story in the narrative.

The story was enjoyable, though at times I wish the narrative was a little more prosaic, less choppy. Alderman’s pitting tech founders against each other seems prescient in light of the recent talk of a cage match between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

Yet I came away a little underwhelmed. The mechanics of how the mostly happy ending is achieved seemed either far fetched or underdeveloped, and the flash-forward at the end left me with a bit of a “so what” taste in my mouth - did they actually achieve anything? Is the point of the book that we’re simply doomed and the task is impossible?

I saw some parallels to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future, but between the two, KSR’s was the better read - more developed, more ambitious, and perhaps even more realistic.

I am a huge fan of Naomi Alderman and could not wait to read The Future. It did not disappoint in its exploration of the way absolute power corrupts absolutely while providing an engrossing exploration of the way technology is used as a means of control. My favorite thing about the way this narrative unfolded is that it did not protect the mega rich companies and moguls doing the exploitation. If anything, it showed just how much we are, in fact, not in control- no matter how much money, resources, and power one might have.

In this story, Martha grows up in a cult with a fundamentalist Father and ends up fleeing. Martha ends up working for a very powerful social media mogul in tech who develops a program meant to predict the end of the world and keep a chosen few protected. Martha uses the insights she gains through her position to try and do right and ends up having to face the consequences of her actions by being held accountable by the one person who's most affected by her decisions.

In the end, we learn a lot about who people actually are versus who they deluded themselves into believing they could be. This is a page turner that lovers of fast-paced dystopian/utopian fiction are going to love. The ending surprised me and still left me gratified which I wasn't expecting while reading an apocalyptic book. I was very satisfied with how the ending makes us have to truly self-examine our beliefs about the end of the world and what does/should matter most.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

Internet influencer, Lai Zhen, discusses survival strategies with her followers but when an assassin targets her in a Singapore mall she is forced to utilize all of her skills to stay alive. Wondering who would want to kill her she is forced to go on the run while seeking answers. Martha Einkorn ex-cult survivor has turned her life around. Now she works for a wealthy social media mogul intent on controlling the world. When a predictive app, warns of the apocalypse, she is reminded of her prophetic father’s Rabbit/Fox sermons and the signs that would accompany the end of times. Zhen and Martha’s worlds are about to collide in an attempt to change the future.

The Future is a thrilling new sci-fi novel which takes a look at humanities impact on the planet and each other. When the worlds pending distraction is predicted by a trend analysis app a small group of people work together to figure out how to survive while potentially saving what they can. I won’t give any spoilers but I will say that there are a lot of twists and turns in this novel leading you down several rabbit holes. Each character introduced plays a roll in both the events occurring throughout as well as the final outcome. I loved The Power so I was excited to see how this novel would play out. Although some of the information was a bit over my head I still really enjoyed this one. I think this would be a great choice for a book group as there is a lot of information to reflect on and discuss. A must read for 2023!