The Future by Naomi Alderman is not what I expected it to be. More importantly, while there are parts I like, I can't say I enjoyed it. I wanted to. I like the idea of people attempting to circumvent the power grabs and societal damage caused by the fictional versions of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. Somewhere along the way, however, Ms. Alderman loses the plot, and The Future morphs into something else. 

The main problem with The Future is that you don't care about the characters. And when you don't care about them and the plot is character-driven, you have problems. So much is made of Lai's feelings for Martha that you think you are reading a relationship story, not speculative fiction. But you don't care for Lai or Martha. Neither are they memorable. 

Then there are the odd points of the novel that occur on a Reddit-type site catering to end-of-the-world preppers wherein one character spends pages and pages rehashing Lot's story from the Bible. While I enjoyed the modern-day spin of it, the points the character was trying to make went over my head. Actually, I didn't care enough to take the time to reflect on what the character was saying for it to make sense. Instead, we have huge swaths of The Future devoted to the Bible and a lecture on how today's society isn't all that different from Sodom and how we can learn from Lot and Abraham. Add in some weird symbolism of rabbits versus foxes, and you have entire pages I skimmed just to get through them.

The most disappointing aspect of The Future, however, is not the poor character development or the Bible lessons. Instead, it is how Ms. Alderman handles the ending. Not only does she make a main character unreliable, someone who wasn't unreliable to that point, but she creates a situation as unbelievable as it is unsurprising. There is nothing shocking about what occurs. The plot twists are not twists because you can see them coming well in advance. When your entire novel hinges on surprising your readers and you fail to do just that, it means there is an issue with your writing. 

While it would be wonderful if Ms. Alderman created a legitimate template for how we could make the necessary changes in society that would circumvent Bezos', Musk's, and Zuckerberg's power and influence, The Future proves to be nothing more than science fiction, and bad science fiction at that. When you don't care about the characters and half of the story is preaching, it makes for a story you are happy to finish and never think about again.