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    Influx
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    Influx
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    Influx
    Audiobook13 hours

    Influx

    Written by Daniel Suarez

    Narrated by Jeff Gurner

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    What if our civilization is more advanced than we know?

    The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon - ("the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured" -Publishers Weekly) - imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.

    Are smartphones really humanity's most significant innovation since the moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century -- fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, cures for common diseases, extended human life, and a host of other world-changing advances -- have remained beyond our grasp? Why has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960s failed to arrive?

    Perhaps it did arrive…but only for a select few.

    Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics-the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel Prize. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.

    They are living in our future.

    Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?

    And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 20, 2014
    ISBN9781101630631
    Unavailable
    Influx
    Author

    Daniel Suarez

    Daniel Suarez is an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies. He has designed and developed enterprise software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries. An avid gamer and technologist he lives in the Western Hemisphere.

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    Reviews for Influx

    4/5

    306 ratings29 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      After Daemon and Freedom, I was looking forward to Suarez' next book. After Kill Decision, I thought "well, everyone can have a bad day". Well, sadly, Influx wasn't much better.

      As with all of Suarez' Novels, the premise is very interesting. But sadly, the execution is just plain lacking. What remains is a mediocre thriller with an interesting premise which cannot stand up to Daemon or Freedom.
    • 3/5
      Slow pacing at the outset -- combined with lots of what boils down to "Let me share all of this research that I did" on the part of the author -- almost killed this one for me right out of the gate despite its thought-provoking premise. But once it finally managed to build and sustain some momentum, it was a pretty fun ride. Unfortunately, it took at least the first third of the book to get to that point. This was my first overall disappointment with this author.
    • 5/5
      The technology in this novel were incredible. I cannot stress that enough. I like how organized it was and yet it was really a hero's journey, a nice good vs. evil sort of story. At first, the folks I thought were going to be the main characters turned out not to be, and not underatanding much science myself, I found it a bit difficult to grasp. However, the story takes off at a comfortable pace, and I appreciate that the author slowed down what needed to be slowed down, and sped up what needed to be sped up. In all, Influx is absolutely a book I recommend. Clever, and really cool.
    • 2/5
      Nach Daemon und Darknet hat mich dieses (Hör-)Buch ziemlich enttäuscht, weil ich den ganzen Plot für unglaubwürdig halte. Ohne zu spoilern kann ich das hier nicht genauer beschreiben, nur so viel sei gesagt: Hochintelligente Menschen, die technisch komplexeste Innovationen zumindest begreifen und deren Folgen für die Menschheit abschätzen können, werden in Hinsicht auf soziale Aspekte nicht kopmlett einfältig und eindimensional denken.Natürlich irgendwie spannend, aber psychologisch nicht überzeugend, und das Ende fast erbärmlich konventionell.
    • 3/5
      For whatever reason this book didn't grab me. I sometimes felt like I was trudging through the science and it seemed to take forever to get started. I wanted to like it more than I did. Good techno thriller and once it gets going it really takes off.
    • 4/5
      Extremely clever and intricate hard-SF novel with plenty of action, adventure, drama, and cutting-edge science. The future tech (or "suppressed current tech') used in the story was utterly fascinating. Conspiracy theorists will enjoy the shadowy, omnipresent, "Big-Brother-on-steroids" creepiness of the Bureau of Technology Control and will root for underdog scientist Jon Grady to find a way to leverage his disruptive invention to bring them down.SF writers (and readers) love imagining what the future will bring. In this highly entertaining novel, the future is now!
    • 4/5
      Suarez's Daemon was basically the best futuristic thriller I have ever read, so this book had a tough act to follow. It's a thrill ride in the same vein as Daemon, and it's great. I didn't go 5 stars, perhaps because it's not as fresh and new as Daemon was.Jon Grady is a brilliant present-day physicist who discovers how to manipulate gravity. But just as he and his colleagues are celebrating their as-yet-unreported breakthrough, their lab is destroyed and he is kidnapped by a secret quasi-government agency called the Bureau of Technological Control, which for 50+ years has been quarantining scientific breakthroughs so that the country and world are not disrupted by innovation. The BTC is a world apart, itself using these technologies, and they live like kings and benefit from quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence, fusion power generation, etc.Jon objects to having his invention hidden from the world, and is eventually imprisoned in a tortuous cell alongside other scientists who have failed to cooperate as an AI attempts to use him to discover how to create human-like intelligence without free will. He is eventually able to escape, and the rest of the book involves his attempt to bring down the BTC and free the other scientists from captivity.Suarez is very convincing with his pseudo-scientific explanations of technological advances, and as in Daemon he is very liberal with high tech killings of a gruesome nature. I guess it all feels plausible enough, though sometimes it's a little close to unbelievable. The main villain Hedrick is a bit cartoonish, as is the secondary villain, Morrison.On the whole, though, great stuff.
    • 5/5
      This was a wonderful book! It was very realistic, and I could imagine the things that happened in it occurring today. It kept me very interested and wanting to know what would happen next, and I couldn't stop listening. I felt so bad for John Grady and the other prisoners and everything they went through, and I was rooting for them through the whole book, hoping they could bring down the BTC. If you like science fiction or thrillers, I highly recommend this book!
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite fiction novels! A must read, forsure!
    • 3/5
      Reads like a movie. Since the movie rights were grabbed by Fox, I can't wait to see the special effects on the screen.

      I couldn't help but hear GLaDOS' voice when reading Varuna's lines. I hope they get Ellen McLain to play her in the movies
    • 4/5
      A lighter read and more sci-fi than Daemon or Freedom. Well written, fast paced and enjoyably story, I liked it.
    • 5/5
      Quite enjoyed this. Some pretty painful parts, but overall an interesting premise.
    • 5/5
      The technology in this novel were incredible. I cannot stress that enough. I like how organized it was and yet it was really a hero's journey, a nice good vs. evil sort of story. At first, the folks I thought were going to be the main characters turned out not to be, and not underatanding much science myself, I found it a bit difficult to grasp. However, the story takes off at a comfortable pace, and I appreciate that the author slowed down what needed to be slowed down, and sped up what needed to be sped up. In all, Influx is absolutely a book I recommend. Clever, and really cool.
    • 3/5
      Daniel Suarez has made a name for himself when it comes to techno-thrillers, and his talent for combining science with action has garnered him much praise and comparisons to the late Michael Crichton. Then there's the fact I very much enjoyed Suarez's Daemon duology. All of that made me pretty excited to read this one, so now that I'm done I still find myself a bit stunned to admit I was disappointed.Many of methods for generating artificial gravity have been proposed for decades, and even more have been proposed by science fiction using all manner of theories and inventions. Jon Grady, particle physicist and the protagonist of Influx has achieved a breakthrough in the manipulation of gravity that would change the world. But instead of being showered with awards and lauded by the scientific community, his lab is shut down by a rogue government organization called the Bureau of Technology Control, his research deemed too dangerous to unleash on the unknowing public. Grady himself is locked away in a secret prison when he refuses to cooperate, after BTC fakes his death and steals his gravity reflection technology. He's not the only one who has had his life taken away like this. It turns out that the world is more technologically advanced than we think, but the BTC has been monitoring science and technology for a long time, covering up and comandeering numerous revolutionizing discoveries and disappearing their creators to prevent social upheaval at all costs. In his nightmarish prison, Grady meets other great minds who have been held captive and they begin to formulate a plan of escape and to bring down the BTC.With a snappy plot like that, I shouldn't have felt put off, but I did. Frustration is perhaps the best way to describe my experience, especially with some of the earlier and later parts of this novel. The author is clearly a smart guy and loves to talk up the features of both real and fictitious technology, which would have been fine if I hadn't felt so often like it was done to the detriment of his story. He places a lot of emphasis on the science and tech; for example, there are pages upon pages dedicated to describing the use of a device, which coupled with Grady's gravity reflection research would allow one to "fly". Instances like these do more than disrupt pacing of the plot, because I think it also takes away from his characters and make them feel less compelling.It's a shame, because the book is at its best when the focus in on the characters, reminding me what I loved so much about Suarez's Daemon and Freedom (tm). I was initially drawn to that series because I cannot resist anything sci-fi and video game related, but came away happy to find the author is capable of doing great things with storytelling and character development as well. I wasn't quite as drawn to Jon Grady or the other characters in Influx (so even when certain characters died unexpectedly, I found I felt very little) but I did loved the story itself. Suarez may go heavy on the technological aspects but he definitely knows how to keep up the action and thrills too. I enjoyed myself a lot when the flow was in its element, when the story wasn't interrupted by info dumps. All in all, Influx was an okay book. It could have been great, but some of its flaws prevented me from jumping completely on board. I can definitely understand the comparisons of Suarez to Crichton, though I think the latter had a better knack for driving a story. Still, if you love techno-thrillers, I would recommend this -- especially if you enjoy the "techno" part, then I think you'd be well-pleased.
    • 3/5
      Imagine that there is a sinister Bureau of Technology Control that has been suppressing technology advances. Nuclear fusion? Perfected in 1985. Cancer? Cure discovered in 1998. "Immortal DNA strand segregation"? Accomplished in 1986. Control gravity? Now (at least in Influx by Daniel Suarez).The Bureau kidnaps the revolutionary scientists that have developed these breakthrough technologies and is withholding their discoveries. The Influx hero has developed a "gravity mirror" that controls gravity. The Bureau deems it disruptive and kidnaps him.I had very high hopes for Influx . The Wall Street Journal thought that Influx could be Suarez's "breakout book and propel him into the void left by the deaths of Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton".It's good. I ripped through it quickly, wanting to see where the story went. But setting the bar as high as Clancy or Crichton is too high.I mostly got hung up on the futuristic technology. It was too advanced. I bought the gravity mirror. But I couldn't put my belief in a fusion reactor the size of a softball. That ultimately distracted me from the rest of the story.
    • 5/5
      I read an e-book version of this, and while I really enjoyed the book, I wish I had a print copy. There is a discussion of conciousness that is simply fantastic, even if it is not closely melded to the plot. There is a lot of real, cutting edge science described in almost understandable terms.The idea behind this book is that scientific advances are being suppressed by a secret governmental agency. That is both fanciful and scary. Fanciful because it doesn't seem in these days of vanishing privacy that such a thing is possible. Scary because on some level it feels real.The only thing I didn't like was the way the book kept turning into a thriller and than popping out again. The thriller aspects seemed formulistic and slightly forced.All in all, I'd like to give this book 6 stars because I kept stopping to think about the science.
    • 5/5
      This is the fourth novel by Daniel Suarez (I read them all) and it is different. It is intended for much wider audience, less technical stuff, and whatever tech is there the reader doesn't need to understand it. In other words, it's much more 'pop sic fiction'. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but something is lost. Having said that, the writing is much more polished and even though I regret the loss of something unique in the previous novels, I can't help but give five stars for this superb thriller.
    • 3/5
      This is my least favorite of this author's books. It took me a while to get into it, and seemed the least realistic of his books. The others, I could see happening. This one seems a bit far fetched. Don't get me wrong. It isn't bad. It just isn't as good as the others I have read by Suarez.
    • 4/5
      Gave it 4 stars but should really be a 3.5 stars.

      Its a good read but its not as good as the previous books he wrote, never the less entertaining stuff.
    • 4/5
      I think Daniel Suarez's writing gets better with each book of his I read (though I haven't read Kill Decision). Influx is a fascinating what-if tale of a government agency that suppresses technological advances supposedly to prevent a sociological catastrophe, while at the same time using and abusing those advances for their own nefarious purposes, and the scientist that ends up helping to bring them down.

      There are some interesting twists with characters. Some characters that I expected to have more impact on the story met untimely ends. There's plenty of fascinating science and technology info dumps towards the beginning of the book. There's some torture of the main character, which I don't particularly enjoy reading, so I did some skimming. But what I did read of it, didn't seem too gory, and it was necessary to his development.

      There's also lots of neat tech being used throughout the story, which is always fun.

      Influx is a good sci-fi/technothriller.
    • 4/5
      The author was described as the rightful heir of Michael Chrichton and I couldn't agree more!
    • 4/5
      There really is a conspiracy. And it's worse than you think.
    • 4/5
      Influx is a novel that has a very interesting premise and for the most part was a very enjoyable read. It details a world where technological inventions are controlled by a secret government agency. The people who generate these ideas are either conscripted to work for this agency or are sent to a special maximum security prison.
      Things I liked:
      Interesting characters and world building made for a fun read. All the different things invented over the years and now controlled by the Bureau for Technology Control were very cool!! Lots of action with futuristic weaponry and effects make this a novel that many people will enjoy
      Things I wasn’t so sure about
      The timeline seemed to not make sense in a few places. The quick turnaround by the main characters former friends and associates was not explained real well. These are pretty small niggles and did not really impact the story greatly.
      4 stars for a fun read. Recommended for anyone who enjoys futuristic action thrillers
    • 1/5
      I'm not sure what is worth - book or narration. Book started very solid and quickly rolled down into depth of dispair. the narration is so terribly cringe worthy awful makes my ears hurt. the first voice sounds like bad translation of equally bad Japanese scify superhero cartoon.
    • 5/5
      As this high-tech, fast-paced adventure opens, John Grady, who has been working for years on a project to develop an anti-gravity machine, has just had a breakthrough. The device works. His team is ecstatic and they see the Nobel Prize in their future, but before he has a chance to patent his invention or tell anyone about it, his lab is attacked by religious fanatics who set off a bomb presumably killing everyone present.In reality his project was shut down by a government organization he has never heard of – The Bureau of Technology Control. The BTC is a shadowy group that began as a secret government agency created years ago to control emerging technology and keep it away from citizens and other governments because the knowledge was too dangerous. In time the acency was forgotten and has now gone rogue.The BTC secretly rescued Grady from the explosion and give him the option of joining their group and continuing development of his invention. Grady refuses and is thrown in a high-tech prison on a remote island where he soon discovers others, like himself, have been taken prisoner and their ideas stolen.While I read a lot of different genres, science fiction and techno thrillers are among my favorites. I like my scifi to be realistic, the technology to be cutting edge, and the story to be something that could, just maybe, possibly, occur. One of the reasons I was attracted to this book, besides the flashy image on the cover, was the comparison to Michael Crichton, a favorite of mine. While this was different from a Crichton novel, it had the same air of possibility, high-tech reality and engaging plot.As a techy and sometimes geeky person I’ve often wondered why more innovations predicted during the 60s didn’t happen. I’m still waiting for my flying car. The concept of a conspiracy involving secret high-tech inventions and the question “Can technology be ahead of its time and its knowledge be too dangerous to be released?” makes for a great story. I have no doubt that keeping high-tech secrets has and undoubtedly still goes on today. One needs to look no further than DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a shadowy military agency in their own right who developed the internet and kept its existence secret for years, to begin thinking along the lines of conspiracy theory.The book didn’t delve into the question of whether or not some technology could be too dangerous to be released to the public. Instead it was a good vs evil plot with the BTC the bad guys and the scientists being held captive the good guys. A fast-paced thriller with some interesting high-tech ideas in an eerily possible world. And how did the BTC explain the advances in computer and phone technology that does exist today? They claim that Steve Jobs was a tricky case and one that got past them. There were a few humorous moments in the book too.Those who enjoy futuristic or speculative fiction will like this book. The dialog does get a little techy at times but not understanding the minutia doesn’t take away from the story. At its core this is a thriller with the added bonus of realistic inventions for the techies.Audio Production:Jeff Gurner did a nice job on the dialog using different accents and changing the voices just enough so I could tell apart the many characters. For the narration he used a serious authoritarian tone fitting the nature of the story. Also included were a few subtle special effects, such as a change in sound when a character was on the telephone or talking over a loud speakers, and a computer-like voice when the AI was speaking. It was just enough to enhance the production but not so much as to be annoying. I don’t like when there is ringing, hammering, pounding, traffic noise, etc in the background. Those types of sounds distract rather than add to the listening experience.
    • 2/5
      Like The Heist, Influx read like watching a movie. It was flashy and cinematic. In fact, I think it would make a much better movie than a book. There are a few scenes that would be great on screen (because, anti-gravity).

      I didn't enjoy reading this book, though. Influx was not particularly well-written. I know that this is a techno-thriller, so I wasn't expecting a lot of subtly, nuance, or well-developed characters. But if you were to consider the old writing adage of "show, don't tell," Suarez's rule seems to be "do a perfectly fine job of showing, but then tell it all as well just in case the reader didn't get it."

      Also, characters reacted over-dramatically to lots of situations. The main character, Jon Grady, reminded me the most of caps-lock Harry from the 5th Harry Potter book. There are way too many instances of ALL CAPS SHOUTING in this book. And throwing things. People throw things in anger all the time.

      Finally, because I've been reading a lot of women in STEM recently, I was very disappointed that there were no major female scientists at all. Would it have been that hard for one of the world-changing scientists with a speaking part to be female? Am I asking too much? In fact, there were no major female characters until halfway through the book (plenty of male scientists though).

      Of the four major female characters, two have been created by men--one is the AI interface to a computer system and the other is a woman who has been genetically engineered and raised by the BTC to be a better human. In Alexa's case, better human in this case means super hot, sexy, designed to look permanently twenty-five, with overly strong pheromones. Oh, I guess she's super strong and smart too. Anyways, Alexa needs to find Rachel from Orphan Black and start a support group for young, non-romantic, stunningly beautiful, well-dressed, genetically-engineered women who were raised by shady, powerful organizations and are really upset to discover they've been designed to be sterile.

      It was an interesting story. If they make it into a movie, I'd probably go see it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Daemon and Freedom by Suarez were two of my favorite reads last year so I was looking forward to Influx and I wasn't disappointed. It was a great mix of futuristic technology, brilliant scientists and a secretive government agency. When the action finally starts (yes it was a little slow in the beginning) it's a wild ride to the end. So wild in fact that it gets a little over the top at the end with buildings flying off into space when hit by a gravity weapon. A lot of times sci-fi books are so plausible they even scare me a little but as much as I would like to imagine theres's all this amazing technology being secreted away the plot isn't at all realistic. As I usually do I set the unrealistic aspects aside and just try to enjoy the story within. That really what makes this one a recommended read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      When Jon Grady figures out how to mirror gravity, he hopes to win scientific recognition. However, the Bureau of Technology Control, a government agency, immediately captures him offering him the choice of working for them or being a prisoner. As he resists their recruitment efforts, he finds his existence and the fate of mankind increasingly threatened by the growing control of the BTC. Using plausible scientific advances, Suarez creates a thrilling and dangerous new world.
    • 2/5
      An OK read. Very fast-paced but also a bit too ludicrous and hollow.