Naomi Alderman on predicting “The Future”

My friends are sick of me recommending Naomi Alderman’s novel “The Future” to them. But I can’t help it, because every other week there’s another news story that feels straight out of the bestselling British author’s brain.

“The Future” is about our tech oligarchs, yes, but it’s really about the power held by the people those billionaires take for granted: assistants, estranged wives, children, former co-workers. The book opens with the apocalypse, but the story is twistier and more optimistic than I expected it to be.