I was prepared to be gravel by Daniel Suarez ’s novelInflux . This techno - thriller , which has already been optioned as a movie , has the look ( and system of logic ) of a blockbuster movie on newspaper publisher . But then I realized : Influx is science fable as Hugo Gernsback would have drop a line it if he lived today , a thriller load down with modern scientific discipline .
Spoilers in the lead …
In Influx , Suarez look to a question I ’ve heard more than once when thinking about the scientific optimism that we had throughout the middle of the Cold War : Where did it go , and how did we go to the Moon in the 1960s , but now the ripe we can bring off is a sound smartphone ?
The account posit by Suarez is that at some point in the middle of the Cold War , the U.S. stand up a dim organization call the Bureau of Technology Control , which sought to gather major scientific and technological rise and prevent them from disrupting the world . Over the eld , the BTC crack the holy grail of applied science : merger power , remedy for cancer , nanotechnology , hereditary engineering , and quite a lot more — but hold them back from the cosmopolitan public . Their federal agency are like stepping into a futurist world , and their engineering is decades in front of everyone else on the planet and beyond .
In Influx , a particle physicist named Jon Grady gets thrown into the way of life of the BTC when his team successfully builds a gravity mirror . It ’s a major achievement , one that has the voltage to modify the world . flop as they ’re catch one’s breath on their laurels , they ’re attacked by a group of anti - technology activist who proceed to blow them and their equipment up — or so everyone thinks . Grady awakens to find that he ’s really in the custody of BTC Director Graham Henderick , and he ’s excited at the potential for the scientist ’s work , enough for him to request that Grady join the Bureau to continue it . When Grady deny , he ’s locked up in a high - technical school jail electric cell called Hibernity that ’s completely isolated from the world , where he ’s summarily tortured , interrogated and exit to be broken .
It ’s in this prison that he ’s reach by other prisoners who , unbeknownst to their capturer , have slowly taken over the prison house . There , they do the only thing they can practically do : design for escape and ways to tip the BTC . When the chance comes , Grady is in the wind , and the novel work into a frantic pursuit as Hendrick frantically circulate the BTC to recover their missing prisoner .
Influx exudate with a sort of technological optimism , and I can see where fans of Michael Crichton would enjoy this . It ’s charge with the latest in scientific ideas , alongside a tight paced thriller . Over the last couple of years , I ’ve gone to a couple of talk of the town that concentrate on forthcoming technologies : robotics , computing organization , 3D printing , cheap blank space engineering science , and so on , and this book finger like it ’s exact the subjects of most of those talks ( and by extension , the research being conducted on them now ) and meshes them together into a paranoid read that pulls out all the stops for what some of this applied science contribute to the table . There ’s energy gun , satellite - ground gravity mirrors , 3D printing and nanobots and artificial intelligence go all over the place .
At the same sentence , there are some interesting subplots that help drive the story along : The BTC has Brobdingnagian networks of AI programs run all over the net and throughout their interior system . Some are dumb — they ’re single design , direct various thing , only to be junked when they screw up or they work their course . Others are a bit smarter , act as as helper or benefactor for some of the character . Some have broken away , helping a couple of rival faction of the BTC in Russia and China , and seem to be the chief motivating gene for Grady ’s immurement .
The declared purpose for the BTC is to hold man back from overpopulation , which seems a routine counterintuitive ( specially when the surefire way to check population ontogenesis is through education and a higher measure of livelihood — the great unwashed run to have fewer children , even as they live longer ) , but it ’s an institution that ’s more interested in out-and-out control : controller over the scientist it ’s locked up and the technology they ’ve plundered , control over the varlet BTC fragments , and ultimately , control over the entire United States .
In this mix of technochatter , Suarez puts together a really fun , jumpy story . This is scifi in the blockbusteriest of ways : if Michael Bay is plunk to direct the coming film version , there ’s probably no better choice . There ’s a ton of nonsensical legal action , burst and consort around shooting , not to name some really coolheaded scenes that would look wondrous in Michael Bay - eque slow movement and perpetual sunset . It ’s also wickedly funny at points , from the variety of clone confederate and their special force ‘ don ’ , to one of the AI systems apologizing to Grady and friend as it tries to simultaneously aid and belt down them .
Despite my earlier reservation , I really came to savour Influx . It ’s entertaining , in a very pulpy sort of way . I ’d like to read another novel with the same material from someone like Charles Stross , because it would be a radically unlike take on the subject — but it probably would n’t be as much unrestrained playfulness as this one was . It ’s the precise variety of scientific discipline fable Hugo Gernsback put to paper back in the twenties : technology everywhere , with the lone discoverer , poise to save the world . This time , it ’s got more slow movement and special essence work up in . I think Gernsback would okay .
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