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Version Zero
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Description
From the brilliant mind of New York Times bestselling author David Yoon comes a lightning-fast and scorchingly observant thriller about how we can save ourselves from the very real perils of a virtual world.
Max, a data whiz at the social media company Wren, has gotten a firsthand glimpse of the dark side of big tech. When he questions what his company does with the data they collect, he’s fired…then black-balled across Silicon Valley.
With time on his hands and revenge on his mind, Max and his longtime friend (and secretly the love of his life) Akiko, decide to get even by rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them. But when Max and Akiko join forces with a reclusive tech baron, they learn that breaking things can have unintended–and catastrophic–consequences.One of Entertainment Weekly’s “Best New Books”
“The novel is at its best when satirizing the high-tech business world and internet culture…fans of dystopian fiction will want to check this one out.”—Publishers Weekly
“For his first adult novel, YA superstar Yoon draws on his decades in the tech industry to envision a takedown of the digital world so complete that paper comes back into fashion…A fast-paced, contemporary take on The Monkey Wrench Gang, blowing up digital infrastructure instead of dams.”–Kirkus Reviews
“With Version Zero David Yoon holds up a mirror to our ways of life, our hardships and vulnerabilities. As he lures us into the story of a smart, naive young man’s desire to make the world a better place, the mirror turns black. This propulsive, visceral, tech-rich tale is both all head and all heart , which is to say, it’s all David Yoon.”–Caroline Kepnes, author of You
“Version Zero is fast and fun, but more importantly, it’s an incisive, thoughtful takedown of Big Tech, our own social media consumption, and ultimately, may just serve as a call to arms.”—Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse
“Imagine a world in which the entire Internet is controlled by a handful of shady CEOs. Oh. Right. Well, imagine someone doing something about it. Imagine a high-speed, edge of your seat adventure with stakes higher than you can measure. Imagine it told in David Yoon’s unique and singularly engaging prose. That’s Version Zero, an addictive, brain-hacking exploration of the tech-run world we live in, and a rollercoaster so fast it will blow your hair off.”–Sylvain Neuvel, author of Sleeping GiantsDavid Yoon grew up in Orange County, California, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Nicola Yoon, and their daughter. He drew the illustrations for Nicola’s #1 New York Times bestseller Everything, Everything. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Frankly in Love, which was a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Honor book. You can visit him at davidyoon.com.9780593190357|excerpt
Yoon / VERSION ZERO
Max is twenty-eight.
It is sometime in the future. Where is he? Probably alone. No friends. No girlfriend. He could still be in Tokyo, among the brutalist canyons of apartment buildings. Office towers crowding into the blue of the early morning haze.
Max must read a lot. What else would there be to do these days?
Say he reloads his vaporizer with a fresh cartridge. Say it looks like a tiny vial of blood. He takes his first hit. On the other side of the planet I step out into the helgic light of late afternoon, wishing I could have one, too. But pregnant girls can’t smoke. So I hold two fingers to my lips and inhale an invisible cigarette.
He exhales a billowing wisp taller than himself. It dissipates like a cloud from an ukiyo-e painting.
Imagine his apartment. Bookcase after bookcase, all the manga and anime he could ever want. No laptops. No devices. A stack of postcards and an inkwell and fountain pen. A small tidy apartment. An ocean of pretty Japanese girls to look at.
Do they remind him of me?
I do not want to think about that.
Maybe he is working on something secret. Or is he simply hiding?
I know all about hiding. I hide in plain sight.
From below, the square notes of a crosswalk melody float into Max’s hearing. It’s an old, warbling tune called “Toryanse.” Max has probably studied it like he studies everything. He hears it every day—he must, it’s unavoidable—and every time it reminds him of the last time we ever saw each other. I’m sure of it.
Going in is easy / Returning is scary
But while it is scary
You may go in / You may pass through
Japan suits him. Lots of tidy spaces and orderly routine. Being Salvadoran American, Max has hair dark enough, stature compact enough to vanish into crowds with an ease he never knew back in Southern California.
Back in Playa Mesa.
I don’t know what he does next. Say he removes his Buddy Holly glasses. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until swirls and checkerboards appear. When he opens them we are atop that bright snowy mountain under the impossible deep blue sky where the days last much longer than they should.
How I wanted one final kiss. How childish. There was no time anyway. The door shut and I was launched up into the whirling universe of crystal and snow.
And there was nothing to be done about that.
Max presses his eyes and sees flashes of phantom light. When will he finally be free of this thing? He’s traveled all over the world. How much farther will he have to travel to escape it?
But while it is scary
You may go in / You may pass throughUS
Additional information
| Dimensions | 0.8500 × 5.5000 × 8.2000 in |
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