Dan Frey

Surprises are rare. The last book that had me “turning” e-page after page to find out what happened next was Andy Weir's The Martian. Then this. Because Dreambound was so unfamiliar, so new, I had no idea what would come. I usually can't help but try to figure it out before the protagonist does, or at least predict what’s coming next. That didn't happen here. Mr. Rey wrote something that engaged me so that I didn't want to spoil what was unfolding (Chapter Twenty Two - whoa and show more F*********k!). That is refreshing. This book was gripping and I was turning those e-pages as fast as I could read. I would have finished it it one sitting if I didn't have life and all intervening. And the pace accelerated until the (okay, I did allow myself one prediction) frenetic end.

Disclosure 1) I rarely summarize fiction plots, mainly because I think it unfair to the author - there are plenty of people who do for those on the hunt, and there is almost always an extra teaser blurb somewhere - and I think it unfair to the reader who, like me, dislikes spoilers. Still,Frey crafts two worlds - the in-book imagined Hidden one, and a more familiarly grounded, yet still slightly different "real" one. And weaves them well in a non-traditional form of storytelling.

Disclosure 2) I received an advance review copy of this from NetGalley and thank the marketing rep from the publisher Del Rey/Penguin Random House for suggesting it to me. show less

Frey, Dan. The Future Is Yours. Del Rey, 2021.
Dan Frey’s The Future Is Yours is time travel tech thriller that owes a lot to Paycheck, which was first a 1953 short story by Philip K. Dick, then a 2003 movie directed by John Woo and starring Ben Affleck. In the Dick/Woo story an evil corporation develops a computer that predicts the collapse of civilization caused by our knowing too much about the future. In Frey’s novel, Ben Boyce and Adhvan Chaudry, two students at Stanford (and, yes, show more there is a direct allusion to Larry and Sergei), form a company to work on quantumly entangling a computer with itself a year in the future. This would allow information from the future to be transferred to the past. That future is in our own timeline and theoretically unalterable. If you read your own future obituary and kill yourself, where does causation reside? But never mind. These two guys are optimists, at least for a while. Where Frey’s novel separates itself from Paycheck is in how it handles characters and literary form. The partners are flawed friends who in their own way betray each other. Ben is a flamboyant salesman who wants to make the world a better place. His partner is a socially withdrawn genius who guiltily lusts after his partner’s wife. Both are conscious of being ethnic outsiders in the big money world of Silicon Valley. The literary form is something like an epistolary novel, which had its beginnings in the 18th century. There is no live action. Instead, we follow the story through the kinds of documents our culture now produces in abundance: emails, text messages, and meeting transcripts. It is almost as if human beings do not exist outside their digital footprints. In this novel, friends and lovers are seldom described as meeting face to face. There is an eerie realism in this. Oddly enough, the novel does not delve into our videoconferencing culture, whose temporal footprints are even more evanescent than digital text. Some readers complain about the sudden turn the novel takes in its final pages, but such plot twists are almost inevitable in time travel narratives. Geekily good. 4 stars. show less

Told in a series of emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, The Future Is Yours is an interesting character study of two young men dreaming of fame, fortune, and making a difference in the world. The difficult birth of a computer that accurately shows what is going on in the world one year in the future makes compelling listening, especially when the dynamics of differing personalities, the headaches of being forced to listen to the people holding the purse strings, and the implications show more of the technology itself are added to the mix.

With the book's format of texts, emails, transcripts, and blog posts, I think The Future Is Yours is best listened to in audiobook format where the different voices can help keep readers focused on the story. I have a strong suspicion that, if I'd read this instead of listened to it, the endless stream of emails, etc. would have made my eyes glaze over from time to time whether I wanted them to or not.

If you're in the mood for a fast-paced character study about a rather scary possible technological breakthrough, I recommend Frey's thriller. It will make you think-- Do you really want to see into the future? show less

This was such a breath of fresh air for an epistolary sci-fi novel! It stayed light hearted and breezy, even when the fate of the world was at stake.

I loved the way the characters all operated, and how easy it was to understand their motivations. Even in the longer segments of speech, I knew exactly who was speaking. The texts and emails all felt realistic and I had so much fun with the way the tone shifted--especially throughout their emails with investors.

The plot held together throughout show more with just a little bit of suspension of disbelief. There was one moment that mentioned Covid that made me sigh because alas the author didn't have access to the Future, but other than that, it was easy to get sucked into this world.

Del Rey sold this to me since I liked Blake Crouch, Rob Hart, and Sylvain Neuvel, and I wasn't disappointed. This has the fast-paced, easy writing of Sylvain Neuvel; the thought-provoking question marks of Rob Hart; and the easy-to-digest yet super clever science of Blake Crouch. show less