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Title: The Future is Yours
Series: ———
Authors: Dan Frey
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF Thriller
Pages: 226
Words: 69K
| Synopsis: |
From the Publisher
If you had the chance to look one year into the future, would you?
For Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, the answer is unequivocally yes. And they’re betting everything that you’ll say yes, too. Welcome to The Future: a computer that connects to the internet one year from now, so you can see who you’ll be dating, where you’ll be working, even whether or not you’ll be alive in the year to come. By forming a startup to deliver this revolutionary technology to the world, Ben and Adhi have made their wildest, most impossible dream a reality. Once Silicon Valley outsiders, they’re now its hottest commodity.
The device can predict everything perfectly—from stock market spikes and sports scores to political scandals and corporate takeovers—allowing them to chase down success and fame while staying one step ahead of the competition. But the future their device foretells is not the bright one they imagined.
Ambition. Greed. Jealousy. And, perhaps, an apocalypse. The question is . . . can they stop it?
Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the costs of innovation and asks how far you’d go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.
| My Thoughts: |
I have seen the future. And it is narcissistic jackasses and emotionally stunted losers. This book was pushing the DNF line almost the entire time and I ended up reading it in one sitting so that I wouldn’t DNF it. Why didn’t I DNF it? Because I wanted to see the ending. And then I regretted that decision when I got there.
Both Ben and Adhi disgusted me to the core of my being. They adequately represented everything that I think is wrong in the world today and it was not one bit entertaining or fun to read about them. Personally, a good old fashioned apocalypse that killed them both, and millions and possibly billions like them, would be an acceptable solution to me. As characters they disgusted me that much. Not one shred of moral fibre was shown, not one tiny bit of backbone was revealed and Principles were jettisoned from the get-go. I actively disliked them the entire book. Even the ending where Adhi shows Ben a solution is so like him, he shoves all the responsibility onto Ben and it’s pretty obvious from Ben’s behavior in “the past” (which is the future) that we all know that the loop will continue. It was enough to make me want to use some profanity and tell them both to grow up and simply make ONE responsible decision in their entire lives.
The fact that Frey writes characters like these is reason enough for me to add him to my Authors to Avoid list. I don’t want to spend time reading the words of somebody who can think this qualifies as entertainment. I’ll give up fiction reading altogether before accepting something like that.
Read at your own risk.
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
Sounds bad Booky. The world is already littered with narcissistic jackasses and emotionally stunted losers, would be nicer to have a future without them.
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A little maturity is all we want, right? I guess that’s too much to ask.
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Sadly I think that’s true.
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Not even an amusing poster pic. Sigh.
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No mustaches, no faces, no nothing.
I have found that “thrillers” seem to be going for the modern art look in regards to their covers. It’s rather stupid if you ask me.
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A picture of Father Brown caked in make-up would be better…
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Agreed!
But I thought that was YOU?
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I thought it was you! FAcT!
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Dang, I forgot the fACT! I hate losing on such a technicality. It’s like an olympic gymnast sticking the landing and then bam, their pinky toe twitches and the judges are all judgey and take off a whole 0.1 from the score 😦
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So close, but better luck next time, Chuck!
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Surprised it scratched out a star and a half with that review. Guess I won’t be putting this one on the TBR pile.
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There usually has to be some sort of (im)moral element for things to get into the 1 or 1/2star territory. But that is why a review plus a star rating is always a good thing.
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Temporal manipulation is already a theme that’s bound to fail rather than work with me, but your scathing remarks on this one sound like a dire warning indeed!
Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Yeah, it was hard to not be even harsher with this. It just wasn’t any fun or enjoyable to read about 😦
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Would you look a year into the future, Booky? Similar to the Arrival concept too, I guess…
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I would not.
Part of that is because I believe that only God can show the future and second, while certain things are immutable, I don’t believe that the future is set in stone (like in Dune’s version of seeing the future).
I guess it boils down to I really think it is impossible except in certain instances. So much like the lottery, I don’t give it any thought 🙂
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Yikes. Despicable characters. Today, you get to be Captain Oblivious (in training) for not DNFing this and letting curiosity win. 😛
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Hahahahaaha, call me Junior, pops! 😀
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Ah, the curiosity that killed the cat, huh? Well, at least you’re still alive to write a scathing review – I call that a win! 😀
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Oh man, that cat totally killed me 😦
On the plus side, it was the final confirmation about modern thrillers so I’ll never be tempted again 😀
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I enjoyed this one, but you’re correct that the characters were absolute dipshits. Though I thought that was kind of the point? The whole thing was your classic “hubris will be your downfall” type of story, and part of the fun was definitely the great pleasure I took at their invention blowing up in their faces!
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If they had been side characters and someone with some good qualities had really tried to change things, I could have dealt with it better.
A short story I could have handled with things blowing up in their face, but a whole novel? It was just too much…
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