The Future by Naomi Alderman is a good read. Although promoted as such and trying hard to be, it is not, however, a book providing insightful commentary on the world of big tech (and big tech super-executives) - too predictable are many of the key characters and their behavior (although not the ultimate resolution of the story).
Naomi Alderman rose to fame with her 2017 novel “The Power”, a book based on the premise that girls all over the world were developing an ability to generate electricity and projecting their new-found power to hurt or to kill men (and the subsequent changes this brings to the world).
True to form, The Future is again a book with a strong female (and diverse) cast. And those seemingly on top of the world - the big tech moguls (including a woman) exhibit a surprising lack of agency. Who run the world? It’s not just girls, but it isn’t the tech titans either in this story.
In The Future, a group of tech billionaires is so worried about the future of the world which “is at a tipping point, ripe for salvation or destruction” that they spent vast fortunes not on saving the world but on ensuring their survival in the face of whatever apocalypse might hit them. Escape plans, early warning systems, bunkers, and military grade equipment are all meant to provide them a way to maintain their life and their lifestyle even if the world around them might no longer exist. (And yes, none of this is new: The premise of this novel feels like it was pieced together from news articles about billionaire bunkers.)
On the other end of the income spectrum, we have Lai Zhen, a survival influencer, making a living peddling much cheaper get-away and survival equipment to her followers.
Their worlds meet, when Lai Zhen connects with Martha Einkorn, assistant and close confidant of a leading tech executive, and their stories remain connected when Lai Zhen barely survives an attempt on heri life by religious fanatics and when - a few months later - the world appears to end and events accelerate.
To be fair, I enjoyed reading the book. It most definitely wasn’t boring. But then, it felt like the book didn’t fully deliver on its promise. It was trying hard to be a story about tech bros ruling the world while ignoring its catastrophic demise. It was trying to shine a light on the downsides of social media (is that still needed in 2024)? And Alderman worked hard to create space in the book for all the material she must have thoroughly researched: Drones, AI, refugee camps and climate change, the takeover of Hong Kong by China, religion (old testament!), and cults, tech moguls building end of days shelters, and humanity’s plight after becoming farmers (we have all read Sapiens by now - no need to walk us through this part again). It is all there. And yet, a lot of times it just feels like Alderman is packing too much into the story, trying to make a moralizing point (and always keeping alive the techno-enthusiastic idea that a handful of people can change the world).
And then we have the ending. As far as surprising plot twists go, this was quite something. And it was too much. I really don’t want to spoil too much, but there is a surprising plot twist and there is outright deception. Finishing The Future, I felt deceived.
Again, if you just want to have an entertaining read, The Future is a fine book (just skim over some of the Reddit forum transcripts). But don’t expect more than that.