I didn’t see any discussion about Naomi Alderman’s new book ‘The Future’ so I’d like to start one. Personally I thought ‘The Future’ was an impressive accomplishment, using an unconventional structure and innovative, distinct and unique storytelling devices to recount an ambitious story.
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Alderman had quite the hit with ‘The Power,’ but her new book doesn’t seem to have caused so much as a ripple so far. This has surprised me because I really enjoyed it!
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I don’t judge books by their cover, but I do judge them on their opening lines.
This book began:
\>> “On the day the world ended, Lenk Sketlish–CEO and founder of the Fantail social network– sat down beneath the redwoods in a designated location of natural beauty and attempted to inhale from his navel.”
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Then it launched into a frankly somewhat clumsy opening chapter where the author tried way too hard with over-the-top vivid descriptions of natural environment, which left me thinking “oh dear this author really wants an award.”
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Oddly enough though, the author completely drops that entire florid almost-Victorian writing style after the first chapter, lurching into a somewhat more clipped and modern style from the second chapter on.
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The topic at this point lurches into a full blown pop thriller – character on the run from a mystery gunwoman.There’s not really any callbacks to the first chapter’s writing style, but I suppose the goal was to establish that the book’s theme will later involve the environment.
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Spy/tech thrillers aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, but I have to say this was very well done, highly engaging and kept the pages turning. I think the author had a vision of a genre perhaps she was less familiar with –a sexy spy thriller– and deliberately chose that as the vehicle to tell the story. I don’t mean that as criticism though – I felt she did a very creditable job at accomplishing what she wanted with her chosen writing method.
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The most interesting part of ‘The Future’ for me was how the author worked in all these deep descriptions of the internal workings and goals of algorithms in social networks; specifically how they are designed to keep people engaged. Often they do this by keeping users angry. This in turn leads to far reaching consequences for wider society.
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The author also makes the case that a few companies – it is very easy to tell which of the book’s fictional social media giants are analogous to real life social media giants we all know– have distinctly different goals and operating methods, but each are toxic in their own way.
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She can be very forthright in her examination of social media, but I didn’t find it to be overtly preachy (though it certainly skirted that line). Rather, I found it enlightening in the sense that it kept me thinking about the author’s words and points in my daily life – obviously this is very much a creditable accomplishment any author ought to be proud of!
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All of this more esoteric stuff –and it certainly can get very down into the weeds, including one particularly obtuse chapter about the history of “machine learning” recounted through tic-tac-toe– is sprinkled in to what is a fast paced and exciting spy/mystery/thriller framework, which seems to be very much aimed at the popular market.It is a difficult balance to pull off, but I did think that the author mostly succeeded.
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There are definitely a lot of similarities at play with Elanor Catton’s ‘Birnham Wood.’ I’m sure that’s a coincidence, but taken together it is really raising a lot of questions in my mind about what exactly billionaires are actually up to in New Zealand!
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While the topics of the two books overlapped, I feel like Alderman pulled off her thriller story in a more engaging way, with more likeable and relatable characters –even if most were wealthy elites– than Catton did with her gang of guerilla gardeners.
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Alderman is somewhat more subtle than Catton as well: while Catton explicitly tells readers her theme was “billionaires are modern mini-gods” Alderman strived to show this with at least a shade more subtlety.
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I thought that the cult sub-plot with its religious/historical deep dive and even Biblical analysis in ‘The Future’ was a brilliant stroke which told in a way that was easy for the reader to follow along. However, my girlfriend argued that I was simply interested in those topics to begin with, and that she found them clunky, unwieldy, and even off-putting.
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Even if that were the case though, I thought the storytelling mechanism Alderman used for the religious subplot sections –an internet forum in which other ‘users’ picking apart and even mocking the religious sections in a column right next to the lengthy religious analysis– was an inspired idea that offered readers who were turned off by the material a very explicit escape valve venting frustrations they may have felt in real time.
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While ‘The Future’ is certainly not a perfect book, I felt it was an ambitious book not only in the breadth of its topics, but in the way Naomi Alderman chose to actually recount the story. I feel it’s important to recognize efforts to strive to do something new and different, and would like to praise Naomi Alderman on ‘The Future’ being a big accomplishment.
by BackyardHistory