Sensation Machines
by Adam Wilson
A razor-sharp and deeply human satire of data-mining, automation, marketing, finance, and universal basic income, Sensation Machines is a virtuoso rendering of a future that's nearly upon us. Michael and Wendy Mixner are a Brooklyn-based couple whose marriage is failing in the wake of their daughter's stillbirth. Michael, a Wall Street trader, has secretly lost the couple's life savings. Wendy, a digital marketing strategist, has been hired onto a data mining project, whose mysterious owner has ambitions to reshape America's social and political landscapes. When Michael's best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy's client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple—and the country. Adam Wilson inhabits the perspectives of the Wall Street bros, the marketing mad men, the Silicon Valley sociopaths—and uncomfortably humanizes them, while considering the ways everyone is complicit in the...