I read The Power by Alderman earlier this year and really enjoyed it so wasn’t surprised to find myself living The Future too. Naomi Alderman has a very distinctive way of story telling and format which can be a bit confusing at first however then it starts to flow naturally and you definitely can’t mistake her voice.

In this novel we follow a group of tech giants and their companies, think Meta, Amazon and Apple. The world is on the brink of collapse, climate change, political unrest, food shortages, all things that could possibly be made worse of better depending on the actions of these people and their enterprises.

It’s hard to talk much without spoilers. The story is twisty and turny, characters are diverse and feel real. This has me gripped for all 400+ pages. It’s been categorised as a thriller, which I agree with but it’s also quite Sci Fi, Cli Fi and Speculative.

I recommend for fans of The Power, of Neil Stephenson, Michael Crichton and anyone that likes stories about the impact of humans and technology on the world.

Oooh, this one was gooood! The Future by Naomi Alderman (whose writing I discovered by playing Zombies! Run! back when my feet worked better) is fantastic. Without giving too much away, it follows a small group of super-rich tech giants as they prepare to be whisked away to their secret bunkers at the end of the world. Nothing in this book is as it appears to be at first glance, and the twists come thicker and faster as the the story progresses. I haven’t achieved a single thing since I got up this morning because I had to get to the end and find out what happens.

Having really enjoyed Naomi Alderman's 'The Power' I was very much looking forward to this but I found it difficult to engage with the story. The chapters skipped backwards and forwards but you had to start reading before you realised you were in a different scenario, it was hard to keep track of the characters and the bad language was tiresome. Overall it was a lot of effort for little reward.

I absolutely loved this - brilliant storytelling as a high-paced thriller paired with thought-provoking philosophy about big tech, human nature and climate change. So timely, and really refreshing to read dystopic fiction that attempts to offer answers as well as problems. I raced through it and would strongly recommend.

Do you ever pick up a book, read the opening couple of chapters and just KNOW that you are going to enjoy it? Well that was The Future for me.

From the very start, this book drew me in and didn't let me go until the final pages. Thoroughly enjoyable read and recommended to all

This is a clear, clever and manipulative book that offers insights into the future and the state of where we all seem to be inevitably heading. The near future is a critical point for change and people of influence and power are given clear choices to act and make the world a better place. With a collection of complex characters from misfits, the hyper-privileged, to survivors of real suffering, Alderman presents it all without judging and lets the characters unfold and deal with very modern day dilemmas.

A truly enjoyable and extremely cautionary tale, this is a deep and meaningful exploration of who we are and where we are - with a warning to act now if you can.

I wanted to enjoy The Future but unfortunately it didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Well-written with an intriguing plot, it's certainly one to try if you're a fan of dystopian fiction.

However, I didn't connect to any of the characters and found them all to be pretty awful. This distracted me from the emotion and tension of the novel. I also found the plot dragged a lot in places whilst the ending was overly rushed and seemed to contrast with the rest of the story.

Overall, a well written but fairly dull read.

Thanks to 4th Estate and NetGalley for the ARC.

A novel set primarily in the near future, everyone is trying to make life on earth bearable for humans, and their co-habitants, but it does not look like it is going to work.
The author introduces the reader to the protagonists, explaining all of the required details.
The characters are not simple souls, and quite a few are in turmoil, of one sort or another.
The relationships are complex, and the tech information is fairly complicated.
As the novel moves forward everything becomes clearer, or does it.
A marvellous story, hopefully not true.
Thanks to the author for a brilliant read, and to the publisher for an advance reading copy for honest review.

I enjoyed The Power and had high hopes for The Future. However, I struggled with the multiple characters and though thought provoking got a little bored. Fans of dystopian fiction will enjoy it.

OK, most important thing first. I can confirm one of the main characters is called Lenk Sketlish. This sounds more like the dish no one orders at a Hungarian café than an actual human being. Distracting.

Anyway, on with the review. The Future is about how fictional versions of techno-giants a la Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg might prepare for a possible oncoming apocalyptic event.

There are lots of great ideas, big ideas, and deep ideas in this book. Alderman is clearly a brainbox and The Future will make you think, possibly about things you've never really thought about before. And that's kind of great, right? I particularly loved the thread about minor manipulations of social media posts and how this can change collective consciousness - cool! There are several points in this book where it approaches greatness, and Alderman, as shown with The Power, is an author capable of greatness.

But this isn't quite a great book. It felt a little disjointed at times. Some sections were incredibly strong, then the book would lose it's way for a while. And I wasn't fully taken with the main character Lai Zhen. She just didn't quite jump off the page for me.

But The Future is absolutely worth a read. Even if you don't love it all, you'll probably find something you love, whether it's meditations on the power of mega tech companies, bible allegories, Foxes vs Rabbits, great descriptions of what AI is (and isn't), repurposed "sex suits" that can guide you through post-apocalyptic situations or out-of-place stunts (inserted for the movie adaptation?) involving explosions and swimming pools.

Right, I'm off for a bowl of Lenk Sketlish.


<i>I chose not to buy and own this book, because that's such a Goddamn Rabbit thing to do, and I'm a Fox. So, thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC in return for an honest review.

With enough big brother technology (that does not seem in the least far fetched) this is a spine chilling read because it feels like it could absolutely happen.

Lots of backstory detail is given on all the main players and really brings them to life along with the well described settings.
My only issue was with the forum entries- where formatting must have gone awry either just on my Kindle or in general as the entries were not within the boxes they should have been, leaving big gaps and interspersed story text and forum text that was difficult to follow at times.

Naomi Alderman is an absolute auto-read for me and The Future was no exception, I absolutely flew through this in one day and can see it doing very well when it is released later this year.

The Future is half terrifying and half fascinating, set in a dystopian future where the richest people in the world have safeguarded their own (and their loved one's) futures and are ready to let the rest of the world suffer the consequences. Mixing technology with questions of morality, Alderman has absolutely nailed the brief of a modern dystopian novel and in my opinion this is her best book yet.

Un beknown to the common folk, the event that lead to end of the world as we know it is about to occur and a cabal of elite people and their families are getting ready to secretly head for their bunkers, armed with pre prepared cover stories to appear in the press as to their whereabouts. I loved this set up but the narrative then embarks on a dizzying array of interwoven back stories about the main players which I found hard to keep track of at times as I was reading the novel in short bursts and I think a dedicated hour or two of solid uninterrupted reading would have helped soldify all the characters and their connections better in my mind. The story is quite unbelievable but it a good ride and I could see the rights being snapped up to make a limited series. The narrative also weaves in bleak but well informed climate change issues. A good dystopian tale.

The Future had many of the hallmarks of my favourite kind of sc-fi -- rooted in reality, interesting characters, innovative / bold ideas that wouldn't be terrible if implemented in our world. However, it didn't quite work for me. It was very slow to reach the "aha," building lots of crisscrossing narratives until they all coalesced at the end. The end was too neat with too much explaining. There are interesting stories in here about the state of our world and the dangers we've created for ourselves. There are interesting ideas about how we might work ourselves out of it. There are interesting characters - a rogue hacker, a survivalist community, a religious cult. But the best sci-fi for me leaves room for interpretation and reflection. The Future didn't quite deliver on that front.

Perhaps not the best read if you are feeling unnerved by the fires in Southern Europe as this is a speculation on an end of the world scenario. However this is Naomi Alderman so there are lots of twists and turns, as well as very gory ends for people who are not living their best ethical and moral lives.

I very much appreciated the thinly veiled descriptions of the three tech leaders and their maniacal desire to save themselves with very little care for the rest of the world. I got a little lost with the workings of computers, and some of the Fox and Rabbit forum stuff did not work for me, it may be that the media did not come across on my Kindle as I kept getting huge blank squares.

But park those niggles as this is hugely satisfying tale and in some way perhaps we can all hope that it isn't just science fiction.

Naomi Alderman came to my attention with The Power, a wonderful slice of dystopia fiction. She returns to the same milieu with this new novel, though it is entirely independent of The Power.

In the not too distant future, the world is about to end and the richest people on the planet are preparing for it. Imagine if the heads of Google, Facebook et al. had secret bunkers to ride out the coming storm. This is the likely story of what would happen if they did.

This is a much more expansive novel than The Power, more epic in scope. Therefore the personal qualities which made The Power so strong are slightly neutered here. This is not to say that The Future is a bad book - it's actually a very good one, and very plausible despite its sci-fi trappings - it just lacks the gut punch of that other work. Those who come to this based upon the strength of The Power will not be disappointed, and will likely bring her new readers who haven't but who pick this up out of interest.

An enjoyable novel then, and one I devoured in one sitting.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

This book is an impressive feat of imagination. Naomi Alderman's vision of a future dominated by tech titans and their rivalry is brilliantly drawn. The technology she envisages is entirely credible, as is the plot and there are some quite thrilling episodes as her characters navigate the dangers of both real and possibly unreal environments. Linked to the plot - which has some surprising twists - is an interesting examination of the contemporary lessons to be drawn from the biblical tale of Lot.
My only reservation is that reading an electronic version of this book is not the ideal experience. In particular the text is punctuated with blank squares: - I'll be interested to see what these might contain - illustrations? - in the print version. Thanks to HarperCollins and Netgalley for the ARC.

The Future is a dystopian novel about tech billionaires, cults, survivalists, and what you'd do to protect the future. Told from multiple perspectives, it follows the daughter of a cult leader, a survivalist vlogger who was in a refugee camp, an ousted tech company boss, the non-binary problem child of one of the tech CEOs, and a programmer turned billionaire's wife, alongside three tech CEOs, as the end of the world looms. The billionaires who destroy the world plan to be safe from any apocalypse, but the future isn't so clear cut.

It's quite hard to talk about this book without giving away some of the plot twists and turns, but it is a fun dystopian novel that really takes as its premise 'what does the future mean to tech billionaires and to other people'. The three CEOs and their companies are pretty blatant parodies of real tech companies, which is enjoyable though occasionally a bit too on the nose (there's only so many ways to obfuscate some of the more outlandish things real tech billionaires have done), and the narrative moves between past and present a lot, building up a picture of a near-future that isn't too different from what we have today. The plot is slightly confusing at first, as it is hard to tell where it is going and chapters jump between past and present a lot, but then moves towards a conclusion that is maybe surprising for a dystopia, if quite neat.

The characters add a lot to the book, and particularly Zhen (the internet survivalist) and Martha (the cult leader's daughter) get a lot of exploration, as well as a teasing romance. The sections of the book are separated by forum posts, many of which are by Martha, which explore some of the cult's pseudo-religious ideas and how they relate to survival and the future, and these are a nice addition, plus there's a subplot that relies on them. Some of the other characters appear less frequently, but were compelling enough that I almost wished there was more of them (e.g. the gay ousted tech boss, the non-binary child of the tech CEO trying to make a difference in the world, the former-programmer-turned-tech-wife, all of whom could really be the protagonist of a book about tech billionaires themselves.

As with many dystopias, The Future can be a bit too on the nose and simplistic at times, but it also engages with the current moment in an interesting way, considering what the future actually means to different people and what might need to happen to change the world. I enjoyed it more than Alderman's previous The Power (my rogue favourite of her novels is The Lessons), maybe because I like content that is critical of Big Tech and this book does it in a light-hearted way that is gripping to read.

Description:
Follows the individuals surrounding a group of three tech (giant) leaders in the run up to a near-future apocalypse. Think Besos, Zuckerberg and Musk's nearest and dearest, plus a survivalist influencer, only they're all much more human than you might expect.

Liked:
Engaging and easy to read; if you ripped through The Power, you'll be devouring this one. It's clever and wry, with some deft twists and turns which, whilst not exactly unexpected, are satisfyingly earned. This feels like a blockbuster, both action-packed and, given the subject matter, weirdly feel-good. Every little detail seems well-researched and plausible.

Disliked:
This perhaps misses some of the brutality of The Power. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing; it delivers its message in an altogether softer way… but I think it might not stick with me quite as long.

Would absolutely recommend: a light but pithy and worthwhile read.

Outstandingly compelling from the start - I found myself thinking about the characters and scenarios when I wasn’t reading, and desperate to get back to find out what happened next and why.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just send a few people to a desert island while we worked to improve everything that politicians and scientists and tech billionaires argue about but fail to action….