THE FUTURE IS YOURS - Dan Frey


Teddy Chaudry is a tech genius on a scale so high that he doesn't fit in even with other tech geniuses. Ben Boyce is Teddy's best friend, who has rescued him periodically and helped pave the way Teddy to navigate the tech world (including helping him get a job with an industry giant). When Chaudry tells Ben that he's developed software that allows a user to access information one year in the future.

Knowing that Teddy is not one for hyperbole, Ben forms a company, begins fund-raising for the device, and convinces Teddy to quit his job at a tech giant to focus on what Teddy is calling a Time Machine.  And as with any tech, Teddy begins work on the next upgrade before they are even live with the one-year-in-the-future tech. Peeking two years in the future seems possible, and Teddy even hints that it might be possible to use the same process to actually send a person forward in time, but that's got a lot more research to look into.

It all seems pretty golden, but there are some problems.  When someone searches their own name and reads an obituary, depression can set in and more than one person commits suicide based on what the see in the future. And when there are deaths related to new, high-profile technology, the government steps in, and Chaudry and Boyce are called before Congress for investigation.  Except no one knows where Teddy is.

Books about time travel are nothing new - there will be a lot of them in the future! - and I've read some of the best of them, and they all have a huge challenge of making this credible and dealing with some of the conundrums of meeting a future or past self.  This gets around some of that by having the time travel be digital rather than physical.

The story is told through multiple sources - congressional hearing transcripts, emails, news clippings.  There is no narrator other than Boyce's testimony to congress.

For me, the problem with this kind of story-telling is that it's hard to really build excitement and energy this way.  Just as we maybe start to get interested in what we're reading, we change formats and point of view.  It makes for chopping reading.  While author Dan Frey writes in this style about as well as anyone could, it still just lacks energy.  

Noting at the end that Frey is a screenwriter suddenly makes sense.  There are very few screenwriters who are also successful novelists (there are some, but they are few and far between) because the formats of story-telling are so different.  

Overall, this was a decent read, but there's nothing too new or exciting here to make it a 'must read.'

Looking for a good book? The Future is Yours by Dan Frey is a decent by not overly exciting novel of time travel via software.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

* * * * * *

The Future Is Yours

author: Dan Frey

publisher: Del Rey Books

ISBN: 0593158210

hardcover, 352 pages

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