Influx – Daniel Suarez

We live in a world of conspiracy theories and for me, those theories sometimes ring truer than our perceived reality. Influx  by Daniel Suarez explores the idea that the human race’s creativity and innovation is stifled and controlled by shadowy forces.  Makes perfect sense to me – and that’s a great premise for a thriller.

Think back fifty years: the pace of technological change has been truly astonishing – the microchip, the Internet and more.  But our vision of the future in the 1960s, with its robots and personal flying machines, was so much bolder.  There’s a lot we haven’t achieved – artificial intelligence, longer lives – even a cure for the common cold.

Consider then, that perhaps some of these things have already been achieved.  What if their discovery has been kept secret so that certain powers can oppress and control revolutionary shifts in scientific possibility?

Particle physicist Jon Grady’s team is about to change the world.  They’ve invented a device that can reflect gravity. Instead of a Nobel Prize, his lab receives a sudden lock-down. It’s the Bureau of Technology Control at work, a secret organisation that uses secret, advanced technologies to further its own aims. Imprisoned with fellow rebel geniuses, who like himself refuse to help the BTC, Grady realises that humanity is being kept in an artificial dark age.  Can he and his fellow prisoners find their way into the light? Is their intellectual power enough to defeat an army with such a huge technological advantage?

Daniel Suarez is an author who is also a visionary: as a former systems consultant, he has designed and developed software for the defence, finance, and entertainment industries. He has spoken at TED Global, MIT Media Lab, NASA, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. An avid gamer with a degree in English Literature, Suarez’s thrillers describe a world where technology changes everything.