Interface

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

Overview

A new technology has emerged, promising a perfect society, and resisters are not long for this world . . .

Ahead, not too many years from now, everyone has been linked to a network of government-mandated brain implants. The Interface has become a way of life, connecting all people to limitless information, nonstop personal messaging, and instantaneous news flashes. Gone are the days of cell phones and laptops—even loneliness itself is obsolete.

But when the genius behind the Interface turns against his own creation and threatens to unleash a deadly electronic brain virus on the public, the fate of the world falls on NYPD Captain Yara Avril, who must stop this sinister, ever-escalating plot before it’s too late. A thrilling nod to a future waiting just around the corner, The Interface is a remarkably prescient exploration of the potential links between boundless connection and cataclysmic disaster in digital society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684428823
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Scott Britz-Cunningham, MD, PhD, is a board-certified nuclear medicine physician who holds academic appointments at the University of Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School. His scientific articles have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, Cancer, and The Journal of Virology. He is the author of two other novels: Code White (Forge Books) and The Immortalist (Simon & Schuster). In his spare time, he performs with the New England Digital Accordion Orchestra and practices Shotokan karate. He and his wife, Evelyn—an artist and art therapist—live in Worcester, Massachusetts. Their grown son, Alex, lives in Maine.

Read an Excerpt

Imagine non-stop personal messaging, carried on silently and invisibly. Limitless access to information. News flashes updated by the second. A permanent video record of every moment one has ever lived. Great thinkers on call for advice any hour of the day or night. Concerts, plays, films, gallery exhibits, even walking tours of every great city—all as vivid as life. Loneliness itself has been abolished.

This is the promise of The Interface.

Editorial Reviews

[Interface] is an engrossing page-turner . . . an often entertaining and energetic dystopian yarn with plenty of intricate action.” —Kirkus

“Captivating from page one, you’ll be drawn into the web of this intriguing and thought-provoking novel that imagines a scary (and maybe all too real) new world.” —Steve Berry, author of The Omega Factor

“Save a spot on your shelf between Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House. Scott Britz-Cunningham’s Interface is the human devolution we’ve been worried about.” —Scott Hylbert, author of Task Lyst

“An intriguing mix of a good mystery and a twenty-first-century view of an Orwellian future. Interface is an entertaining, fast-paced detective story that provides a credible scientific and clinical version of what might be possible in the not-so-distant future.” —John Donoghue, PhD, Wriston Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science

From the Publisher

2022-11-02
In Britz-Cunningham’s SF novel, implant technology lets people surf the web with their minds but also forms the basis of a plot that could kill millions.

In the near future, an all-encompassing Interface wirelessly connects everyone to the internet with brain implants. It lets people visit websites by thinking about them; conduct conversations with thoughts; record video of everything they see; and form a collective “Meta-Mind” to vote on referenda or serve as jurors in criminal cases. The downside is that the government wants to use the Interface to set up a totalitarian “thought readjustment” program and has made not getting an implant a capital offense; the law is enforced by the all-powerful Federal Anti-Terrorist Authority. Battling these injustices is Taiki Graf, the cyberneurologist who invented the Interface but now opposes it as an affront to individual freedom. He’s found a way to get the implants to cause infections that make people slaughter everyone they come across; he hopes this will quickly convince people to remove them. He squares off against his half brother, Egon Graf, FATA’s ruthless director; caught between them is Yara Avril, a New York City police captain who’s the ex-lover of both brothers. Assisted by journalist Jericho Jones, Yara tries to track down Taiki before he can let loose the brain plague. Britz-Cunningham’s vision of a tyrannical hive mind is detailed but not very captivating; the Interface merely seems like an update of present-day internet and smartphone tech. Fortunately, the novel features nifty terrorist plotting and police procedural elements and characters that are sharply drawn and magnetic, if sometimes a bit hammy (“I can have you flayed alive and have molten lead poured into your bowels,” fulminates Egon). The prose is also punchy and colorful throughout: “With a quick machinelike motion, the Moose yanked the Bowie knife from the parrot man’s hand and buried it in his eye. The parrot man waved his left hand, feebly, as if batting off a fly, then fell to the ground in silence.” The result is an engrossing page-turner.

An often entertaining and energetic dystopian yarn with plenty of intricate action.

Kirkus Reviews