Tristan Da Cunha is the most remote yet inhabited island in the world. With just 297 people living on the volcanic enclave, it’s more than 1,750 miles away from its nearest coast of South Africa. There are no airports, hotels, or bars and it is only reachable following a six-day boat ride. Yet for all it lacks, the island still has access to the internet. There is virtually nowhere on earth where you can truly escape from technology.
Authors, like me, who write speculatively about tech, are only limited by our imaginations. And that’s why we are fascinated by it, because it offers limitless potential.
Often it is far more of a challenge to create characters and worlds that are overshadowed by tech that goes askew than tech that gets it right.
What happens when automation that has been designed to assist humanity starts working against it? That question has been the basis of two of my six novels, The One and most recently, The Passengers.
While the history of novels with a tech twist date back to the second century’s A True Story by Lucian of Samosata, I’ve chosen my favourite speculative thrillers from more recent times.
The Circle, by Dave Eggers
Knowing how much time I spent (okay, probably wasted) on social media, it was a journalist colleague who recommended this novel to me. I opted to audiobook it and for thirteen hours and fifty-six minutes of the following week, I became absorbed by a not-too-distant future. The story follows Mae, a twenty-something woman, who lands her dream job at The Circle – a Facebook/ Apple-style tech giant and social media pioneer. Its goal is to make the world a smaller place by encouraging us to publicly share more of our lives. Reluctant and reticent at first, Mae gradually becomes convinced it’s the way forward until a series of events opens her eyes to the dangers of total transparency. The Circle is a thoughtful, frightening tale of the power of social media and a herd mentality that doesn’t question what it’s being told.
The Power, by Naomi Alderman
Often compared to The Hunger Games and The Handmaid’s Tale, The Power is speculative fiction at its best. It poses a simple question – what if men were no longer the dominant force in society and women were? What would happen if women could make men afraid instead of the other way around? In Alderman’s story, once girls reach their mid teens, they develop a strip of muscle in their collarbone which creates jolts of electricity which they can shoot from their fingertips. Whether it’s science or nature that has created this kink, we are unsure. Regardless, it gives them the power to maim or murder at will. And almost overnight, the world changes beyond recognition. It’s a fascinating, brilliantly executed story.
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
The beauty of a Blake Crouch novel is how he takes a subject as mind bending as quantum mechanics and simplifies it for readers like me who can’t even work out a percentage without Googling it first. It took Crouch ten years to plot and master Dark Matter and it was time well spent. Jason, our protagonist, finds himself kidnapped and transported to a world similar, but not identical, to the one he was just in. He embarks on a mission to return to his wife and son but en route, becomes entrapped in multiple, nightmarish versions of alternative realities and parallel universes. Throw in a relentless enemy attempting to thwart him at every turn and the end result is a thriller that’s nothing short of mind-blowing.
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
I’ll be honest – there was little about the premise of this book I found appealing when a friend gave it to me back in 2011. I’d left my interest in computer games back in my teenage years, so an entire novel based on a character who inhabits a virtual world held little appeal. However, it took just one chapter to hook me. Set in the 2040’s when our overuse of technology has seen our world gradually erode, many of its inhabitants have chosen to ignore the catastrophic problems and spend their lives immersed in an online virtual reality utopia. And the more time they lurk in VR, the worse the planet becomes. Wade Watts, our hero, embarks on a quest both in the virtual world and the real one littered with video games and 1980s pop culture references. Ready Player One blends fast and furious action with a message.
The Memory Chamber, by Holly Cave
Cave’s second novel enables people to create their own after-life. It’s our heroine Isobel’s job to take your most treasured memories and turn them into an artificial heaven that you can frequent long after your time on earth is at an end. And reliving a never-ending loop of your greatest memories puts her services in great demand. However, an ethical line is crossed when she develops feelings for married client. Then when his wife is murdered, she uncovers a much darker side to her career. It’s a strikingly original novel and impossible put down.
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
Published almost thirty-years ago, this is the oldest of my selection but even more relevant today than it was in 1990. The DNA of dinosaurs, taken from the fossilized blood of gnats and mosquitos, is used to clone everything we learned about at school. Now they are penned in together and located on an island for the entertainment of paying holidaymakers. But when Crichton throws in a disgruntled employee, greed and corporate espionage, the end result is a cautionary tale of how possessing the knowledge to do something doesn’t always mean that we should.
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Andy Weir and I have three things in common. We both share the same British publisher; he and I began our careers self-publishing before our books were eventually picked up by mainstream publishers, and we’ve use flawed technology as the basis of some of our work. However, Andy’s imagination and technical knowledge is, quite literally, out of this world. The Martian follows Mark, an astronaut stranded on Mars after a dust storm wipes out his space suit’s biomonitor, leading his colleagues to believe he’s dead. However, he’s very much alive and must salvage all he can from other Mars missions to alert earth that he’s alive and needs rescuing. While it might be less dystopian than my other choices, The Martian taps into our fears of isolation, the degree to which we rely on technology and how much faith we continue put into it even when it lets us down.
