This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Blake Crouch, author of UPGRADE.

About UPGRADE: At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little… sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

About Blake Crouch: Blake is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of a dozen novels, most recently, Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade, for which he is also writing the movie for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners. His international-bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, that was Summer 2015’s #1 show. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created Good Behavior, the TNT show starring Michelle Dockery based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. His novel, Recursion, is currently being developed as a Netflix series by Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves, and Skydance is developing a film adaptation of his novella, Summer Frost, based on Crouch’s script. His novels have been translated into forty languages and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and Cemetery Dance. At the moment, Crouch is writing a new book and creating a nine-episode adaptation of his novel Dark Matter, for Apple TV+. Blake lives in Colorado.

This week’s picks:

• Blake: Almond Croissant (London)
• Tracy: Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer
• Patrick: For the Love of Spock (Documentary)

Links:

• Blake Crouch on Twitter
• Tracy Townsend on Twitter
• Patrick Hester on Twitter
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2022 Patrick Hester

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