The Future is a dystopian novel about tech billionaires, cults, survivalists, and what you’d do to protect the future. Told from multiple perspectives, it follows the daughter of a cult leader, a survivalist vlogger who was in a refugee camp, an ousted tech company boss, the non-binary problem child of one of the tech CEOs, and a programmer turned billionaire’s wife, alongside three tech CEOs, as the end of the world looms. The billionaires who destroy the world plan to be safe from any apocalypse, but the future isn’t so clear cut.
It’s quite hard to talk about this book without giving away some of the plot twists and turns, but it is a fun dystopian novel that really takes as its premise ‘what does the future mean to tech billionaires and to other people’. The three CEOs and their companies are pretty blatant parodies of real tech companies, which is enjoyable though occasionally a bit too on the nose (there’s only so many ways to obfuscate some of the more outlandish things real tech billionaires have done), and the narrative moves between past and present a lot, building up a picture of a near-future that isn’t too different from what we have today. The plot is slightly confusing at first, as it is hard to tell where it is going and chapters jump between past and present a lot, but then moves towards a conclusion that is maybe surprising for a dystopia, if quite neat.
The characters add a lot to the book, and particularly Zhen (the internet survivalist) and Martha (the cult leader’s daughter) get a lot of exploration, as well as a teasing romance. The sections of the book are separated by forum posts, many of which are by Martha, which explore some of the cult’s pseudo-religious ideas and how they relate to survival and the future, and these are a nice addition, plus there’s a subplot that relies on them. Some of the other characters appear less frequently, but were compelling enough that I almost wished there was more of them (e.g. the gay ousted tech boss, the non-binary child of the tech CEO trying to make a difference in the world, the former-programmer-turned-tech-wife, all of whom could really be the protagonist of a book about tech billionaires themselves.
As with many dystopias, The Future can be a bit too on the nose and simplistic at times, but it also engages with the current moment in an interesting way, considering what the future actually means to different people and what might need to happen to change the world. I enjoyed it more than Alderman’s previous The Power (my rogue favourite of her novels is The Lessons), maybe because I like content that is critical of Big Tech and this book does it in a light-hearted way that is gripping to read.
Fiendfully Reading 
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