Odds Against Tomorrow

Posted on 17 April 2017 by Nathaniel Rich

A novel about fear of the future and the future of fearNew York City, the near future Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician, is hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building Mitchell is employee number two He is asked to calculate worst case scenarios in the most intricate detail, and his schemes are sold to corporations to indemnify them against any future disasters This is the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastrophe ecological collapse, war games, natural disasters he becomes obsessed by a culture s fears Yet he also loses touch with his last connection to reality Elsa Bruner, a friend with her own apocalyptic secret, who has started a commune in Maine Then, just as Mitchell s predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst case scenario overtakes Manhattan Mitchell realizes he is uniquely prepared to profit But at what cost At once an all too plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Nathaniel Rich s Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization The future is not quite what it used to be. New Download [ Odds Against Tomorrow ] author [ Nathaniel Rich ] – kino-fada.fr Mitchell Zukor is a mathematician at the new company FutureWorld, in New York City, sometime in the near future When Mitch was in college, the city of Seattle was destroyed by a massive earthquake The resulting cost to corporations from lawsuits, etc., was astronomical It is FutureWorld s job to indemnify businesses from such losses in the future Mitchell spends his days imagining ecological disasters, nuclear war, massive epidemics One of the scenarios he envisions is a flood overtaking Ne Mitchell Zukor is a mathematician at the new company FutureWorld, in New York City, sometime in the near future When Mitch was in college, the city of Seattle was destroyed by a massive earthquake The resulting cost to corporations from lawsuits, etc., was astronomical It is FutureWorl... Odds Against Tomorrow is a little better than okay I read the book mostly in a rented condo way the hell up on Lake Superior after kayaking and other terrifying activities with my family When I needed space, late in the evening, Rich s book did its job The premise was relevant and interesting enough to hold my attention but I m not sure the premise as presented is substantial enough to carry a novel.You know how some novels have a bazillion characters I m looking at you, Games of Thrones guy Odds Against Tomorrow is a little better than okay I read the book mostly in a rented condo way the hell up on Lake Superior after kayaking and other terrifying activities with my family When I needed space, late in the evening, Rich s book did its job The premise was relevant and interesting enough to hold my attention but I m not sure the premise as presented is substantial enough to carry a novel.You know how some novels have a bazillion characters I m looking at you, Games of Thrones guy Odds Against Tomorrow goes the other route, focusing nearly exclusively on four main characters, one of whom spends much of the novel off screen while two of the remaining three border on caricature It s like Rich knows these people in real life but forgets we don t Maybe they re NYC archetypes But I live in Wisconsin, sucka, so I m not following you Also, slightly off t...2.5 5starsThis would have been fine plot wise it was a very interesting take on a dystopian futuristic world but the writing just wasn t for me and I found it pretty boring and rambly.After dipping into this book here and there, I finally stayed up past midnight to wade through the rest Water puns intended.I am a fan of post apocalyptic fiction, and this hassimilarities to a disaster movie, watching events unfold as the disaster takes place Mitchell Zukor is a mathematician with an innate ability to predict and calculate disaster, and after Seattle is destroyed by a massive earthquake, he takes a new position with a disaster assessment type firm in New York City I th After dipping into this book here and there, I finally stayed up past midnight to wade through the rest Water puns intended.I am a fan of post apocalyptic fiction, and this hassimilarities to a disaster movie, watching events unfold as the disaster takes place Mitchell Zukor is a mathematician with an innate ability to predict and calculate disaster, and after Seattle is destroyed by a massive earthquake, he takes a new position with a disaster assessment type firm in New York City I think his boss is supposed to be mysterious, but he wasn t strange enough to do the trick.I think the author enjoyed the research of this novel quite a bit, as there is a lot of information dumped between dialogue about the potential for viruses, natural disaster, antibiotic resistance, famine, mathematics, logic, government policy, etc He didn t spend as much time with the characters as there are some that are introduced and then kind of disa...Shock and Awe and a Failure of the ImaginationIn the coming apocalypse, millions will suffer and there s not much we can do about it That s the message of Odds Against Tomorrow, Nathaniel Rich s exquisitely detailed story of the inundation of New York City by category 4 hurricane Tammy It s being hailed as the finest novel of climate change, in th...Nathaniel Rich s Odds Against Tomorrow, an eerily prescient take on worst cast scenarios and postdeluvian New York, is like ahumane, optimistic version of Cormac McCarthy s The Road Mitchell Zukor, a brilliant risk assessor, makes a fortune providing mathematical proof for society s darkest fears after leaving the comfort of a white sh...I really enjoyed the first half of this book, although there were a few glaring errors of fact and or human nature that a good editor should have caught For example, a NYC fireman sprays children with a fire hose already implausible to the point of breaking and then a few pages later we read that they ve turned the hydrants off in the bronx because water is scarce Or the math equ...This was a good read Blows my mind that Rich wrote a Hurricane Sandy novel 5 years before Hurricane Sandy.But, if you think about it, it just goes to show that these storms catastrophes shouldn t be catching us off guard The s...Mitchell Zukor hat Angst Vor der Zukunft, vor allem Nach seinem Studium wird er deswegen von einer mysteri sen Beratungsfirma engagiert, f r elf er die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Katastrophen kalkulieren soll Als eine seiner apokalyptischen Vorhersagen tats chlich eintrifft, macht er sich auf die Suche nach seiner Freundin E...This is a difficult book to review as I m not entirely sure how I felt about it Let s just say this if you like stories which leave their meaning wide open to personal interpretation, Odds Against Tomorrow might be a great book for you Without revealing too much, protagonist Mitchell Zukor is an unsettled young man making his way in Manhattan following a mid western upbringing Mitchell s great talent in life is his ability to sift through data and mathematical models and synthesize probabi This is a difficult book to review as I m not entirely sure how I felt about it Let s just say this if you like stories which leave their meaning wide open to personal interpretation, Odds Against Tomorrow might be a great book for you Without revealing too much, pr...

English
17 April 2017

Nathaniel Rich