Pentatonix ~ Mad World

Tags

Mad World, Pentatonix

 

The Future is Yours, By Dan Frey ~ 3.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Diversity, Mystery, Science Fiction, Suspense

Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: February 9th, 2021

352 Pages

Synopsis: Two best friends create a computer that can see one year into the future. But what they can’t predict is how it will tear their friendship—and society—apart.

Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry are outsiders struggling to find their place in Silicon Valley. But when Ben reads Adhi’s graduate dissertation about an obscure application for quantum computing, he has a vision of a revolutionary new technology: a computer that can see forward through time by communicating with its future self.

The two friends quit their jobs and team up to form a business, building a company that will deliver their groundbreaking device to consumers around the world. Rival tech giants try to steal their innovation, while government agencies attempt to bury it—but Ben and Adhi are helped by their own cutting-edge technology, staying ahead of the competition and responding to challenges before they arise.

As the tension mounts, Ben and Adhi’s friendship begins to fracture under the weight of ambition, jealousy, and greed. Most frightening of all, they discover the dark side of the machine they’ve created—the way in which viewing the future sets them on a path toward unavoidable disaster of epic, apocalyptic proportions. Unless they can disrupt the technological system they’ve created, there won’t be any future at all.

Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the social costs of innovation and asks how far you’d be willing to go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.

I’m always intrigued by a story told in epistolary format, but because events are relayed by various means—which in the case of The Future is Yours, include: emails, text messages, interviews, and transcripts—it’s easy for the storyline to get confusing. I’m happy to say that for the most part that wasn’t the case here. There were a few sections here and there where I had a bit of difficulty discerning between Ben and Adhi, but this wasn’t a big issue. I thought at first that Ben was extremely shallow, immature, and arrogant, but I have to admit he grew on me as the story progressed. I loved Adhi, the genius loner who is somewhere on the autism spectrum. While The Future is his invention, he agonizes over the moral repercussions that result. Even as their friendship disintegrated I found myself rooting for them. As far as the actual plot goes, well, there aren’t many surprises. I mean how difficult is to ascertain that being able to see what’s going to happen a year from now is going to lead to nowhere good? For me, the best part of the story was the ambiguous ending which leaves the reader wondering. I thought it was absolutely brilliant! So, overall, I found The Future is Yours, to be a little rough around the edges, yet still entertaining. It’s intriguing science fiction that explores the moral complexities of technology and brings to mind that well known phrase: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.