THE FUTURE

Another vision of the not-too-distant future from the author of The Power (2017).

“On the day the world ended, Lenk Sketlish—CEO and founder of the Fantail social network—sat at dawn beneath the redwoods in a designated location of natural beauty and attempted to inhale from his navel.” Readers who appreciate everything that’s going on in the opening sentence of this novel are likely to enjoy the whole thing. This is a story about the wealthiest people in the world and how they live. Other readers might like to know that this story is set in the very near future in a world that is divided between tech billionaires, preppers, and pretty much everybody else. Where these categories overlap is where it starts to get interesting. Lai Zhen lived through the Fall of Hong Kong to become a survivalism influencer. Martha Einkorn escaped her father’s cult to become Lenk Sketlish’s right hand. Badger Bywater is ready to use their access to Medlar—the network their mother oversees—to help their friends try to save the world. And Selah Nommik is best known as the wife of Zimri Nommik, but she’s also a kickass coder. Alderman begins with the end of the world and moves back and forth in time from that moment, which sometimes makes it difficult for readers to understand where they are relative to end times and sometimes makes it difficult to understand characters’ relationships to each other at any given moment. That said, 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.