The This, Adam Roberts

16 February 2022

This sounds convenient. Instead of hauling a smartphone around all the time, you could instead have a social media platform injected into the roof of your mouth. The implant would mesh with your brain, eventually taking the place of your phone. Blink twice to take a photo maybe, communicate brain to brain with friends who also have the app implant.

Welcome to The This, the futurist social media app, and novel of the same name, written by British science fiction author Adam Roberts, published by Hachette Australia. The app is popular with many, but there are those who do not like it. They do not want to be part of the so-called hive mind. They’ve seen Twitter, they’ve seen enough. But the storyline has all the hallmarks of a hive mind, a sprawling, surreal, neural network spanning space and time.

Adan is a journalist, sent to profile the CEO of The This. But after Adan’s mother unexpectedly leaves the country, he is forced to join the army as he is left without a home or any money. Adan is battling a robot invasion, in a reality far removed from the one he once knew. In later centuries a diminished humanity is fighting off another hive mind, one intent of the final destruction of humanity. And all because we wanted to try out a new social media app…