Anticipation

by Neil Taylor

Overview

You are being played.

Your every move is being watched by businesses hoping to manipulate your behaviour. Every picture, every post, every like, every follow, every purchase, every search.

When 17-year-old Riya Sudame inherits her father’s secret AI algorithm, she and a handful of carefully selected Keyholders hold the power to predict people’s futures using their online data. But with great power comes great responsibility, and they must safeguard it from falling into the wrong hands.

Enter Jim Booker, a powerful social media tycoon, who will stop at nothing to steal the technology for himself. Soon Riya faces a critical choice. Fighting ruthless tech giants seems like an impossible task—wouldn’t it be easier to relinquish her father’s creation in exchange for a normal teenage life?

But if she does, she will have to live with the knowledge that she is the reason that, like everyone, you are being played.

Neil Taylor marks his debut in this dark, twisty AI thriller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781915584502
Publisher:	Neem Tree Press
Publication date:	02/04/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Neil Taylor began his career in software engineering after leaving school at 16 years old to enter a 4-year engineering apprenticeship. He then went on to study computer engineering at university before moving into the software industry. His work has taken him across Europe, as well as to Nagoya, Japan and Boston, USA. Neil is intrigued by behavioral science and the comparison between the human brain and computers—they are more alike than we would like to believe. Neil currently lives in Durham, UK where he enjoys various physical pursuits, including mountain biking and yoga.

Editorial Reviews

"Neil Taylor’s thriller Anticipation unravels a high-tech mystery in an unsettling near-future scenario. Anticipation is a brisk, upbeat thriller that works toward an expectations-reversing conclusion and promises future adventures." — Foreword Reviews

"A chilling peek into the future of predictive technology." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-11-09
An orphaned British teen teams up with a secret coalition to stop a powerful piece of technology from falling into the wrong hands.

Having lost her mother years before, 17-year-old Riya Sudame finds her life turned upside down when a plane carrying her father, Sanjay, and his Russian business partner, co-founders of Predictive Technologies, crashes. A grieving Riya receives a cryptic letter from her dad, forwarded by his solicitors, which names two trusted associates and nominates her as a Keyholder. She’ll join a clandestine group entrusted to oversee her father’s greatest and most dangerous invention, the Anticipation Machine—AI that accurately predicts people’s future behavior. But one of the Keyholders is a traitor who has sold their names to Jim Booker, a social media mogul who will stop at nothing to acquire this technology. On the run from Booker and his goons, Riya must rely on a hacker, a spoiled rich kid, and predictive AI itself to help identify the traitor and outwit the bad guys. The thrilling plot will grab readers immediately, and the twists will keep them engaged. The discussion of morality in AI is timely, but it never devolves into an indictment of tech itself. Instead, Taylor presents a thought-provoking and much-needed look at social media and the ability of its algorithms to influence users. Riya and her father read as South Asian, and there’s diversity among supporting characters.

A chilling peek into the future of predictive technology.(Thriller. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews