Name: Lauren Sullivan's review of The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey
Item: The Future Is Yours
Rating: 4
Author: Lauren Sullivan

Dan Frey

Two best friends create a computer that can see one year into the future. But what they can't predict is how it will tear their friendship--and society--apart. Ben Boyce and Teddy Chaudry are outsiders struggling to find their place in Silicon Valley. But when Ben reads Teddy's graduate dissertation about an obscure application for quantum computing, he has a vision of a revolutionary new technology: a computer that can see forward through time by communicating with its future self. The two friends quit their jobs and team up to form a business, building a company that will deliver their groundbreaking device to consumers around the world. Rival tech giants try to steal their innovation, while government agencies attempt to bury it--but Ben and Teddy are helped by their own cutting-edge technology, staying a step ahead of the competition and responding to challenges before they arise. As the tension mounts, Ben and Teddy's friendship begins to fracture under the weight of ambition, jealousy, and greed. Most frightening of all, they discover the dark side of the machine they've created--the ways in which viewing the future sets them on a path toward unavoidable disaster of epic, apocalyptic proportions. Unless they can disrupt the technological system they've created, there won't be any future at all. Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the social costs of innovation and asks how far you'd be willing to go to protect the ones you love--even from themselves.

A Novel

The Future Is Yours

Lauren Sullivan

I’ll start off by saying this novel was nothing like I expected it would be, but I’m pleasantly surprised by it. The formatting was interesting, as it was told mostly through emails, texts, transcripts, and articles. I listened to this, as opposed to consuming it with my eyes, and though I haven’t tried it both ways, I feel like listening to the book added so much more to the experience. The audiobook was a production with various voice actors, making it very fun.

This story is extremely sci-fi at its core, but it is really just a look into human behavior and focused on relationships between individuals. You don’t have to love science fiction to be enthralled by this book because the science aspect isn’t the focus. Additionally, the pacing was very good, and the characters were well written.

The reason it’s 4 stars and not 5 is because our protagonist is unlikable, but that’s by design. Additionally, from what I can tell from google, the author is a white man, but the two main characters are Black and Indian and make references to being a part of those marginalized communities. I’m not sure if the author had sensitivity readers look over the story — and I found nothing necessarily WRONG with their portrayals — but I’m often wary of white authors writing from perspectives they can’t understand. Knowing this throughout the whole book changed the way I consumed it because every time they referenced racism or some sort of societal bias, I found myself wondering what authority he had to write about it. Like I said, the way it was written wasn’t bad or insensitive, but it colored my experience.

Anyway, if you enjoy a dystopian character driven read that easy to comprehend, this is for you!

Nik ✨

I’ll start off by saying this novel was nothing like I expected it would be, but I’m pleasantly surprised by it. The formatting was interesting, as it was told mostly through emails, texts, transcripts, and articles. I listened to this, as opposed to consuming it with my eyes, and though I haven’t tried it both ways, I feel like listening to the book added so much more to the experience. The audiobook was a production with various voice actors, making it very fun.

This story is extremely sci-fi at its core, but it is really just a look into human behavior and focused on relationships between individuals. You don’t have to love science fiction to be enthralled by this book because the science aspect isn’t the focus. Additionally, the pacing was very good, and the characters were well written.

The reason it’s 4 stars and not 5 is because our protagonist is unlikable, but that’s by design. Additionally, from what I can tell from google, the author is a white man, but the two main characters are Black and Indian and make references to being a part of those marginalized communities. I’m not sure if the author had sensitivity readers look over the story — and I found nothing necessarily WRONG with their portrayals — but I’m often wary of white authors writing from perspectives they can’t understand. Knowing this throughout the whole book changed the way I consumed it because every time they referenced racism or some sort of societal bias, I found myself wondering what authority he had to write about it. Like I said, the way it was written wasn’t bad or insensitive, but it colored my experience.

Anyway, if you enjoy a dystopian character driven read that easy to comprehend, this is for you!

Content warnings: (view spoiler)[death of parents (off-page, one from cancer and one from suicide), absent parent, gambling addiction (in the past, of MC’s parent), bipolar disorder (description of episode that led to self-harm and hospitalization), anxiety, grief, mention of suicidal ideation, infidelity, ableism (MC’s mental illness is outed disparagingly) (hide spoiler)]

“So an antisocial introvert doing everything in his power to avoid the world … may have created a technology that will end up destroying it?”

Ben and Adhi were college roommates who bonded over shared trauma – the death of a parent – as otherwise they couldn’t be more different from each other. Ben’s charismatic and driven, someone who sees himself as a Steve Jobs visionary type. Adhi, on the other hand, is an introverted engineering genius. Dissatisfied with their lives after college, Adhi uses knowledge from his Google day job to create a time travel machine, albeit one with very specific limitations. It’s a quantum computer that connects with itself exactly one year in the future, giving them access to everything on the future internet. They quickly come up with a startup to turn it into a consumer device, but as the year progresses, can their friendship – let alone the world – survive knowing the future? After all, why wouldn’t you want to know about the future?

“I do not intend to pin my fate and success to chance, or investment.
To the roll of the dice, or the rise and fall of the market.
I intend to bet on myself.”

While some of the possible benefits – and pitfalls – of being able to see a year in the future are explored, the focus of the book was more on Ben and Adhi’s relationship rather than the technology itself. Adhi compares them to Kirk and Spock, though I think that’s a bit idealistic (and rather indicative of Adhi’s way of thinking). While they may see themselves as idealistic visionaries and even superheroes, there to bless the world with their invention (or at least the part of the world that can afford to buy it), they both have a lot of morally grey moments. Understandably, they’re quickly swept up into the VC echo chamber and find themselves pulled between the allure of making money or “bettering the world.” There’s a lot of hubris, and the addition of a love triangle with Ben’s wife Leila adds another level. The author does a good job of laying out the solidity of their friendship before things went wrong and then each incident that fractures it.

“Is “playing God” so wrong, in a world that seems devoid of meaningful divine interventions?
Someone needs to do it.”

Though I found the plot itself predictable, the format was fascinating. I love epistolary novels and this is definitely the modern version of one. The story is told through blog posts, press releases, emails and text messages, within the overall frame of the transcripts of a Congressional hearing. Even in these formats, each character has a certain style, from Ben’s rambling to Adhi’s staccato sentences. I would’ve liked a few more red herrings in terms of the plot, but I suppose it really says something for the characterization that I kept reading even though I was pretty certain how it would end after a chapter or two (and yeah, I was right). As for other cons, the author is white, while the characters are people of color – Ben is black and Adhi is Indian. For the most part, it’s not much reflected in text, besides Adhi’s mom emailing him and telling him to come visit to have saag or daal. There is one moment, when a female employee accuses Ben and the company in general of being a boys’ club, where Ben throws their diversity around, like it somehow absolves them of misogyny. That felt off to me, but it could’ve just been the general ickiness of the whole exchange.

Overall, three and a half stars, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this author.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Laura Kehoe

This was such an interesting and thought-provoking story! At first I had a harder time getting into this story because of the style it was written in. But once I got used to it, I found it worked really well with the story. 

I also had a harder time connecting with the characters. But, I think some of that might have been because of how the story was told. Because it was told via text messages, emails, and other written documents, it was harder to really get into the character's heads. After a while, I started to figure out the characters better, but it took a bit. 

That being said, I still really enjoyed this book! The concept was so interesting and really got me thinking. Time travel/predicting the future isn't always my favorite themes in a book, but I thought the way it was handled in this book was well done. It made sense and felt a lot more realistic than some other stories.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of speculative science fiction. It's not as action-packed and exciting as some stories, but I really appreciated how thought-provoking and engaging it was. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the chance to read The Future is Yours in exchange for an honest review!

Jeremy Anderberg

Pretty fun, but not as polished as I was hoping. More like 3.75/5. Crichton-esque, but without the explainer that makes it feel as possible as Crichton always did.

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: The Future is Yours

Author: Dan Fray

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3/5

Recommended For...: mixed media format, ya, sci-fi

Publication Date: February 9, 2021

Publisher: Del Ray

Pages: 352

Recommended Age: 15+ (rogue AI, slight language, romance, slight sexual content)

Synopsis: 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.

Review:I had to dnf this book at about 45% of the way through. much like the supercomputer in this book I found this book way to predictable for my liking. I'm not saying that I've read this before and that it's plagiarism, but I do feel like I know the story already.

Verdict: Not for me but maybe for you!

Lauren Sullivan &
The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey

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