The Future by Naomi Alderman

In a not-so-unimaginable future world, three tech billionaires have bought (and kept for themselves) a proprietary sentient AI program named AUGR designed to predict civilization-collapsing events days to weeks before they happen—not so that they can be stopped—but to be warned in enough time to decamp to one of their many luxury bunkers for the years needed until they can re-emerge and use their power and resources to dominate the remaining world.

Sounds about right. Author Naomi Alderman worked in the tech bro ecosphere as a game writer for years and knows the key tech mogul players—and shares some of her opinions of them in the interview below. One wonders if The Future is fantasy come to novel form.

Anyway, not everyone in on the plan thinks it’s a good idea, so when AUGR predicts a virulent pigeon flu with a 17-day incubation period followed by a quick and likely death, the tech icons scramble for cover and the story behind the story begins to unwind.

Part revenge reverie, part exposition, part apocalyptic warning, The Future hits some big themes in an entertaining, and sometimes laugh-out-loud, way. The question at the core of the novel is, why the people creating much of the tech dystopia in the modern world are unwilling to use their power for the common good rather than the common stockholders, and why are they spending millions to billions on bunkers to escape the world they have helped create?

I’d like an answer for that from the bunker bros.

NOTE: See the interview with Naomi Alderman below for some great tidbits on the tech bro world and a discussion about billionaires and their bunkers.

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