Influx
Daniel Suarez
Feb 2014 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Jeff Gurner
4.3star
7 reviews
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13 hr 46 min
Unabridged
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What if our civilization is more advanced than we know?
The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon—“the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured” –Publishers Weekly) —imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.
Are smartphones really humanity’s most significant innovation since the moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century—fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, cures for common diseases, extended human life, and a host of other world-changing advances—have remained beyond our grasp? Why has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960s failed to arrive?
Perhaps it did arrive…but only for a select few.
Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they’ve been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics—the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel Prize. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.
They are living in our future.
Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?
And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?
The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon—“the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured” –Publishers Weekly) —imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.
Are smartphones really humanity’s most significant innovation since the moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century—fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, cures for common diseases, extended human life, and a host of other world-changing advances—have remained beyond our grasp? Why has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960s failed to arrive?
Perhaps it did arrive…but only for a select few.
Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they’ve been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics—the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel Prize. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.
They are living in our future.
Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?
And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?
Ratings and reviews
4.3
7 reviews
RedBlitzenwood
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March 16, 2021
This book blew my mind. It started off slow. With a lot of technical talk that went over my head about how the gravity mirror works, and the concept just sounded like a cheap conspiracy theory. Never more so than when we discovered the secret organization was a part of the US government. But it got better FAST. The technology, the pacing, the evil boss who becomes more obviously mad every time we see him. The true darkness and horror of the prison (seriously, I've seen genre horror that's not half as horrific as that section, strongly suggest you skip over that if you can't deal with that kind of thing), the way the concept becomes more plausible as we get more information, and the way the technologies interact with each other forms a masterpiece that completely changes the way I think about and look at sci-fi. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who likes sci-fi (and can handle the dungeon sequence).
About the author
DANIEL SUAREZ is the author of the New York Times bestseller Daemon, Freedom™, and Kill Decision. A former systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, Mr. Suarez has designed and developed software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries. His fiction focuses on technology-driven change, and he is a past speaker at TED Global, NASA Ames, the Long Now Foundation, and the headquarters of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. An avid gamer and technologist, he lives in Los Angeles.
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