The Future - by Naomi Alderman

Book Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Naomi Alderman is the bestselling author of The Power, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and was recommended as a book of the year by both Barack Obama and Bill Gates. As a novelist, Alderman has been mentored by Margaret Atwood via the Rolex Arts Initiative, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. As a video games designer, she was lead writer on the groundbreaking alternate reality game Perplex City, and is cocreator of the award-winning smartphone exercise adventure game Zombies, Run!, which has more than 10 million players. She is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University. She lives in London.