Influx

Daniel Suarez

Feb 2014 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez imagines a chilling future where technological advances are held hostage by the government in this thriller that perfectly blends “nail-biting suspense with accessible science” (Publishers Weekly).

Physicist Jon Grady and his team have discovered a device that can reflect gravity—a triumph that will revolutionize the field of physics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control.

The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of sudden technological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger. Because the future is already here. And it’s rewards are only for a select few.

When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison housing other doomed rebel intellects. Now, as the only hope to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age, Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy—one that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making.

Ratings and reviews

Suarez is one of the better wrirers out there. You can certainly see Crichton's influence in his themes and style, which is a very good thing. This has been lacking since Crichton died a future looking but grounded science fiction book. The ending got a little over the top compared to the rest of the story but very good outside of that minor fault.

This is a very well written technological thriller, I think I preferred Suarez's other books because they confined themselves (for the most part) to technologies that are actually quite plausible. The characters are sympathetic for the most part except the ones you're supposed to dislike. The plot is riveting, though towards the end it seemed to be one long fight scene until they reached the epilogue. My one complaint was that it left unaddressed the very real question of how right or wrong the BTC was about the consequences of some technologies.

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 a New York Times bestselling author, TEDGlobal speaker, and former systems analyst. His unique brand of high-tech fiction explores the causes and impacts of rapid technological change. The author of seven novels, his latest, Critical Mass (second in the Delta-v series), is a realistic space-tech adventure depicting humanity's transition from a climate-imperiled, Earthbound civilization to one that utilizes resources and energy from space to secure a promising, sustainable future.