Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan
Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Infinite Detail
A Novel

Author: Tim Maughan

Narrator: Joe Sims, Marisa Calin

Unabridged: 9 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/05/2019


Synopsis

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet.

This program includes a bonus interview between the author and journalist Brian Merchant.

BEFORE: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s become a center of creative counterculture. But it’s fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York City—now the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis?

AFTER: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the Internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Mary—who has visions of people presumed dead—is sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Croft’s black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure.

The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the End of the Internet, the End of the World as We Know It.

About Tim Maughan

Tim Maughan is an author, a journalist, and a features writer who uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore issues around cities, class, culture, globalization, technology, and the future. His work regularly appears on the BBC and in Vice and New Scientist.

About Marisa Calin

Marisa Calin is an actress, narrator, and novelist born in England and educated in New York at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. An artist with a flair for everything literary, she has written a young adult novel, You & Me, which received a Kirkus Starred Review, and has narrated the audio books Ruby Red and Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Meike on February 26, 2019

This is the kind of book we might pick up again in ten years' time only to be devastated by how many of Maughan's predictions of techno-terrorism have come true: Intertwining two alternating timelines - before and after a total internet shutdown that has plunged the world into chaos -, this author t......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on December 03, 2019

Wow ... One of the best SF books I've read this year, torn screaming and bleeding from the zeitgeist. A post-apocalyptic yarn about #TheEndofCivilisation when the Internet goes tits-up that refuses to pander to any genre expectations. Brutal, bleak, angry, savage, violent, a bit in your face with it......more

Goodreads review by Scott on February 09, 2020

Imagine there was no internet. What would happen if we were cut off from our updates, our likes, our calorie tracking apps? How would we cope when our online calendars disappeared, when our entire history of communications with friends and family turned to electronic mist, deleted in an instant along......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on May 22, 2020

This is one of those novels that delve deep into the lives of a richly imagined near-future that takes us on a trip to a dystopia that explores: THE END OF THE INTERNET. Honestly, I'm reminded quite a bit of William Gibson's style. It's a slow and careful build-up of situations and world-building tha......more

Goodreads review by Wendy on December 07, 2019

This book came in the mail today and I read the whole thing this afternoon, in about 3 hours, stopping only to make lunch. Suffice to say I found it riveting. This is a clever work of dystopian near-future sci-fi, imagining a world where the Internet is even more ubiquitous, and even more commodified......more


Awards

  • The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year
  • Locus Awards - Nominee