Last Friday (May 16th), the GrepBeat Book Club reunited for a sixth in-person meeting. Following a brief lull due to “Nexus” comprising some of the densest 400-and-something pages published this century, we were pleased to welcome back a hearty bunch of morning lit lovers. This group continues to offer a great chance for people to build connections across the community, so we hope to see the regulars back and some new members joining the next time we get together on Friday, July 11th to discuss… well… whatever book is up next (that’s currently classified, slash TBD).
In the meantime, here’s a recap of the sixth book we’ve read together: “The Future” by Naomi Alderman.
The Book in 150 Words
Lai Zhen is a survivalist who’s attained fame sharing tips online. Martha Einkorn escaped her father’s religious cult and rose to become the assistant to one of the world’s most powerful tech CEOs.
At an exposition featuring three tech titans—Lenk Sketlish (Einkorn’s boss), Zimri Nommik, and Ellen Bywater—Zhen and Einkorn strike up a romantic relationship. When they part, Einkorn leaves Zhen with the mysterious gift of “AUGR”—an AI program designed to keep its users safe via situational and predictive analysis.
As it turns out, AUGR’s greater purpose is to alert elite tech leaders of an impending apocalypse, so that they might escape to luxury bunkers to ride out The End. Armed with her gift, Zhen finds herself in the midst of this plot, forced to navigate the tech titans, deal with a possible apocalypse, and find out if Einkorn and AUGR are what they seem to be.
What Book Club Thought
We had a mixed bag of reactions to this one.
On the one hand, most members seemed to think it was an engaging, and at times entertaining read. It’s certainly a book that hooks you in the sense that you want to find out what’s doing to happen next, and it always feels like an interesting twist might be just a few pages away.
On the other hand, there was more outright criticism of the book than we’d had in several meetings. Some found the characters to be underdeveloped in a way that took away from the story. Some found the book’s more hopeful ideas (and it does have those!) to be a wee bit too idealistic. Yours truly thought one particular twist was set up in a way that was solely designed to mislead the reader (annoying) rather than enhance the story or help a reveal pay off (fun!).
All in all I’d say the closest thing to a group reaction summary was: Fun read, interesting ideas, aggravating execution at times. The spring popcorn flick of paperbacks.
2.8/5 stars.
Notable Quotes
- “What he knew was: more than greed causes wealth, wealth causes greed.”
- Editor’s take: Probably not an original thought, and this comes from one of the book’s many somewhat-odd side quests into survivalist-chat-room-biblical-parables. But. Still astute.
- “It dated from the dying of the light: the period when… the old saw that the young would know less than they did”
- Editor’s take: This little bit from Zhen’s description of a Roman temple being excavated resonates for no reason whatsoever.
- “The algorithms can’t do everything. But if they can make us more polarized, more angry, and more hateful, surely they can do the opposite of that.”
- Editor’s take: This falls into the category mentioned above, of the book’s more hopeful ideas sounding a bit too idealistic. Nevertheless, this would be a nice one not to totally discard with snorts and rolled eyes.
What’s Next For Book Club
Next Book: Classified / TBD
Next Meeting: Friday, July 11th at the GrepBeat HQ in Durham.
