This was great fun reading The Future. From page 1, its originality and world-building were excellent. Surprising twists and turns in this story of billionaires endeavoring to escape the end of the world.
This is a long book (880 pp) well worth the journey. It is a brilliant, dystopian novel. Markley is an excellent writer who will capture your attention with a rich story line containing multiple characters. It is all too real, which makes this fictional work scary.
"This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting." -Stephen King
From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become…
Rich writing about one house and all that happens in it, and to it, through the generations. Characters are wonderful and relatable, and how their stories intertwine is brilliant.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
In 2032, interconnect, an advanced artificial intelligence supercomputer, emerges as a beacon of hope for humanity, promising a utopian future guided by flawless algorithms and 24/7 connectivity to citizens.
Jared Rohde, a disillusioned academic seeking meaning, witnesses the disturbing rise of algorithmic control over human behavior. Torn between two realities, Jared experiences psychic turmoil as he's drawn into a machine-curated world fostering narratives of hate and division.
Meeting a diverse group of "organic" resisters, Jared learns of interconnect's diabolical methods, orchestrated by a power-hungry President and human surrogates. Together, they strive to disrupt the machine's dark influence and its catastrophic impact on humanity.
Discovering a potential space within the curated reality that elevates human consciousness, Jared becomes a crusader despite his own struggles with psychosis and split-reality experiences. In his quest for truth and hope, Jared confronts the daunting challenge of breaking free from interconnect's grip on society.
Precipice: When Algorithms Triumphed offers a compelling and unsettling 20-year journey exploring the consequences of humanity's deepening reliance on artificial intelligence.
