What would happen if you could see the future? Would you let it dictate your present? How would it affect your relationships? And is this something that one should really muck around with? Dan Frey has created a book that starts out as a tale of friends building "the Future" together. This new company is going to bring about global equality and make them rich. They know this because they've seen a year into the future. But can their friendship survive? And what happens when the future starts to change? Really gripping and thought-provoking.

If you could look one year into the future, would you? This epistolary novel follows two friends who invent a technology that lets them do just that.

Two of my buzzwords are time travel and mixed media, so I knew immediately that I would enjoy this book. It was written in emails, text messages, court transcripts, and blog posts. We follow our two main characters as they invent this technology that lets them glimpse the future and how the technology effects their friendship and the world.

This was a fast paced and fun book that I would recommend to fans of sci-fi thrillers or people who enjoy mixed media.

The Future is Yours
By. Dan Fey
P. 352
Format: e-arc
Rating: ****

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I received The Future is Yours from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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The Future is Yours is written in an alternate narrative style. It is a collection of text messages, emails, and transcripts of congressional hearings. You learn exclusively about the characters from their written text. Given the nature of the book, this is apt.

What would happen if you had a machine that could see the internet one year in the future? On it’s surface it sounds great. You would know if you and the person you are crushing on will get together. You can see your vacation pics. You could have foreseen Covid coming and stocked up on a house in rural America before they became a hot commodity.

Then you start to think about the ramifications of what would actually happen if everyone was given access to this technology. That is the plot of The Future is Yours.

While the story focus a lot on the tech, the actual story is about the people. Ben is a business person through and through. He is trying to break through as an African American male who lost both his parents - his mom to cancer and his dad who left. He also has ADHD. I’m not going to lie, I started to really despise Ben. I questioned what Fey was doing with the character. I held out hope though that it was all leading somewhere. It did.

Adhi is an Indian American tech genius. He also is neurodiverse with mental health concerns that are not really brought in until later in the book. Adhi’s mental health is not the main focus of the book, although it does get tangled into the plot - but only in the way that it is a character focused book and his mental health is part of who he is. Given the book as a whole I think it really works. Also more mental health rep, especially when it shows the individual as a person and not a disorder, is so important.

If you like science fiction that will leave you thinking and keep you wondering until the end, then you will enjoy The Future is Yours. Be forewarned that there is mention of suicide multiple times in the book. Also, the female characters are more a means to an end than actual flushed out characters. I enjoyed Ben’s wife but I can’t even remember her name - so yeah.

I hardly get the time to read adult fiction lately. I'm happy I made time for this one. The format of the story is unusual in that the entire book is written using email and text messages in the exposition of the plot. I liked it eventually- but it was hard to adjust to at first.

This book is written in the form of emails, articles, transcripts and text messages, which I normally wouldn't like, but it is done very well. It held my attention all the way through and I finished it very quickly. It is about time travel to the year 2022 and takes place in the future (late 2020-late 2021), so it is interesting. It does not contain details about the next couple. Of years, but more about the characters' lives and the invention they create. It is definitely an interesting topic. It was a tad confusing at times (deciphering who was saying what in text messages or wrapping my head around the jumps in time and some of the "tech talk," but not enough to dislike it or give up. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wants a lighter time-travel or techy book. It is a quick, easy read with some interesting concepts.

This book has a unique format. It is told in the form of transcripts, e-mails, text messages, etc. I started reading it and thought it was just an interesting way to start the chapter, but after a few pages I realized this was the way the entire book was going to be.
It was an interesting story, and I can tell the author was trying to make the characters more "real" than a lot of stories out there. The protagonist is deeply flawed and I never really got the point where I liked him. I just couldn't really find myself liking any of the characters or being able to empathize with the much except for Adhi. He was an interesting character and some of the illustrations of his dealing with mental illness were interesting, but not fully developed.
The book has some interesting twists and I enjoyed the ending, but it was a struggle for me to get through it. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. Interesting concept, one interesting flawed characters, and all the characters are very flawed (to the point where they are caricatures of Silicon Valley tech bros); predictable twists and a difficult to get into and read format made this an "eh" book for me.
I gave it three stars, but that is probably rounding up from a 2.5 or so.

This book was interesting to read, especially considering the evolution of technology we’re currently living through. A tale that has not been told before, which I find is more and more rare in this genre. I personally enjoyed the unique way the story was told through emails and virtual correspondences. New Dan Frey fan!

It is always enjoyable to read an author who starts with a good idea and lets it spin. I liked the format of text messages, emails and senate hearing transcripts. The plot also grabbed me and I read the majority of the book in one day.

Thank you to Netgalley and Del Rey Books for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was an unexpected joyride for me. As a fan of Max Brooks and Andy Weir, I was pleasantly surprised to find the format of this novel to be in the form of “primary sources” or texts, emails, transcripts of Congressional hearings, etc.

The novel itself tells the story of two college friends who create a new upstart tech company called The Future, which provides users with the ability to read and view data up to a year in the future. Despite the book’s format, the characters in The Future is Yours are well established and each has a distinctive and unique voice. Having known like minded individuals, I can say that Dan Frey nailed the two most common personality types in both Ben and Adhi.

I highly recommend this book for any fan of futurism, sci-fi, or speculative fiction. If you love reading books in the vein of Max Brooks or Andy Weir, you will not be disappointed.

I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.

Imagine if you could see what was in the news a year from now? Considering how the last year is gone, I’d guess it would be more than any sane person could bear.

Adhi Chaudry and Ben Boyce became friends in college even though they couldn’t be more different. Adhi is an introvert and a brilliant computer engineer. Ben is a charismatic salesman type who dreams of making it big. When Adhi develops a theory that would use quantum computing to enable a PC to show data from one year in the future, Ben immediately sees it is an opportunity to start a company that will make Apple and Amazon look like small potatoes. In fact, they even get confirmation that this is what they will do once Adhi gets the machine working and they look ahead a year to see that their corporation, The Future, has made them rich even before they start selling everyone their own machine. There are troubling aspects to the technology, but with the knowledge of what they will do in hand, Ben and Adhi press on even as problems pile up and begin to take a toll on their friendship.

There’s a lot I liked about this clever sci-fi book, and one of the best things was that it's epistolary novel told in texts, emails, and transcripts that bounce around from Ben’s testimony told in front of a congressional hearing just before The Future starts selling the machines to the public to flashbacks about how it all came about. It’s not just a clever gimmick either because there’s actually a reason why it’s told this way that becomes clear late in the book.

The idea of the glimpsing ahead to the future via a quantum computer was also intriguing and very well done. It could have been a concept that came across as wonky or even magical, but Adhi’s theory along with the development process grounds it more than enough to seem feasible.

Once the set-up is established, author Dan Frey then does some very nice work in a way that shows he thought through the implications of this technology even if his main characters haven’t. Adhi and Ben do a few tests that convince them that the future cannot be changed by them knowing the future. Although Adhi is more cautious we see how Ben’s enthusiasm blows past any notions that this is a bad idea.

This is where Frey’s themes become clear, and it couldn’t be more timely than this moment when social media companies who made fortunes by allowing anyone to say pretty much whatever they want have now been forced to reckon with the consequences because it turns out there’s a lot of people who are shameless opportunists who will lie constantly, and there’s even more people ready to swallow everything they say.

That’s why Ben’s character really struck me because he talks a good game about how letting everyone share the information about the future makes for a fair and level playing field and that it would actually make the world better. Yet, the story also shows time and again how he uses that argument to beat down rational concerns and criticisms about the technology he’s trying to sell and how much responsibility he bears for it. Sound like any tech billionaires you know?

Frey uses this to turn what could be the book’s biggest plot hole into a strength. Because if Adhi and Ben can see the future, why wouldn’t they just keep it secret and play the stock market to get rich without taking the tech public and open the Pandora’s Box of letting everyone see the immediate future?

Part of the answer is that it isn’t enough to just be rich, they want to become famous as world changers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg. Or at least that’s Ben dream, and he can persuade Adhi that it’s his too. Which means they have to let the public know about it so the excuses about doing it for the good of the world start up. Plus, they know that they’ve already done it by looking ahead so why worry about it? They’ve set up a logic loop that demands that they do this even as the warning signs start flashing faster and faster.

On top of all this, it reads like any of those real stories about how some friends started a business, made it big, and then when disagreements come about it, everything falls apart. As you read their emails and texts you can see the cracks starting to form, and there’s a real sense of impending doom because readers can see what’s happening even if they can’t. This has impact because Frey built a real and believable bond between Adhi and Ben so that I was still rooting for these guys even as I was thinking that this was all a terrible idea.

Combine all this with a fantastic ending, and you’ve got one of the better sci-fi books that has extremely relevant themes.

My thanks to Net Galley for making an eARC copy of this book available to me.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is at all interested in how advances in technology can potentially affect our lives going forward. The book is told in a series of email exchanges, text messaging threads, and meeting minutes from a congressional inquiry. I found that this method of storytelling worked particularly well for the subject matter of this book. It seemed to me that the author did a nice job of explaining how quantum computing might actually work in a practical setting, and a good job as well at considering some of the social and philosophical issues that would arise if the device were ever to be actually created.

Read this book; you will not be disappointed.

Thank you so much, NetGalley, Del Rey and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, for the chance to read and review this book.

Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry are best friends and very different from one other. While Ben is more extrovert and chatty, Adhi is introvert and quiet, but they complete one other. They help, support one other, but when they create a computer that can predict the future, everything changes and it will tear their friendship and the world apart. The future, the computer program, can make you see one year in the future, what you will be doing, dating, buying and so on, but soon they realize the future their device is foretelling is not a rosy one. Can they stop it?

This book is absolutely intriguing and captivating, The story is told by emails, texts, pictures, conversations, blog posts, interviews, swinging between past and present and future.
It's a story really thrilling, pushing the reader to ask questions about innovations, the future, friendship and love. I love the way it's written, even though some may find this way a bit confusing, because, swinging between past, present and future leaves the reader a bit dazed, but it's definitely worth it. I loved reading the relationship between Boyce and Adhi and I was really fascinated, and scared, by the possibility of a device like that.

It's a book a definitely recommend to those who love stories about time travel, friendship and science.

This is the best time-machine book since Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays. I am fascinated by the concept of time travel, and the clever advancement of the plot through documents and text messages was very entertaining. I hope to see more from this author!

This was an interesting read. Two best friends that met at Stanford – one an extroverted sales guy, the other an introverted genius. They build a company around a device that can more or less see the future one year in advance. The story follows the two as they build the company and get closer and closer to going pubic with the device. But things start going wrong – what if the device destroys the world? This really delves into the relationships between the two friends along with the rest of their circle. It is told through memos, emails and text messages, so that takes a bit getting used to. I’m still not sure what I think about the ending on this one though. It is an interesting twist and not exactly what I was thinking would happen. A solid book about tech, relationships and how far people are willing to go for their dream.

This book was a bit of a challenge at first due to the way it is written. It is a combination of text, email and Congressional hearing testimony that takes some getting use to. The basis of the story is time travel and the challenges and concerns that it can present. While the main storyline is interesting, the method used to present it left a bit to be desired.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.

I am not sure why i requested this book and I am sad I did because now I have to rate it. It was written in a way that was cold and hard to follow. I felt I never got the truth from it.

The Future is Yours by Dan Frey is an epistolary novel told through emails, texts, and transcripts. The format makes for a very quick read. If you've never read an epistolary novel before, it may take you a chapter or two to really get into the rhythm of the story, but the plot will pull you in quickly.

I was drawn to The Future is Yours after loving Recursion and Dark Matter so much but thought the story was a little flat and a few of the storylines never quite felt complete.

If you enjoy time travel and sci-fi storylines, give this one a shot.

Thank you @delreybooks @netgalley for my review copy.

Q: If you could look one year into the future, would you?

Best friends, Ben and Adhvan, have founded a tech startup that boasts technology the world has never seen. They’ve created a machine that can look one year into the future.

So I want to start this off saying that I don’t normally read science fiction. So take my review with a grain of salt.

I didn’t like the format the author used. I think this book had so much potential, but the way it was written was just not the best way to tell the story, in my opinion. It’s written as a series of texts, transcripts, and emails between the characters. It just never really grabbed my attention. It was also a slower paced book and I was just expecting there to be more action.

The story was definitely an interesting concept and it did make me stop and think about what I would do. If I had the opportunity to see a year in the future, would I? I think I would. But only one year into the future. I wouldn’t want to know beyond that!

If you’re a science fiction fan and don’t mind the format or a slower pace, this one might be for you. It comes out 2/9/21!

#bookreview #netgalley #thefutureisyours #arc #ebook #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #igreads #bibliophile #scifi #readersofinstagram #reader #bookcommunity #booksofinstagram #thetipsyreader

In the future, apparently, novels are not written but rather assembled, like a model kit for a jet fighter. In a continuous series of emails, texts, letters and congressional testimony we are told the story of a device that can see into the future, allowing the user to outwit the stock market, wager successfully on any sport and get a Netflix rollout schedule before their neighbors. The Future -- the cleverly chosen name for the device -- runs up against the past of its inventors. Unfortunately, The Future -- the book, not the device -- is all plot and nothing but the plot. This future is not for me.

I gotta tell you that I am not even sure why I requested this book from Netgalley. This is definitely not the type of story that I normally choose. With that said, I found it to be engaging and well, I wanted to continue to the end.

This is the story of 2 tech fella's that created a machine that gives them the ability to look into the future. Does anyone really think that is ever a good idea? Read it and find out!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release in February 2021.