The Fear Index

by Robert Harris

Hardcover, 2011

Description

Fiction. Thriller. HTML:At the nexus of high finance and sophisticated computer programming, a terrifying future may be unfolding even now. Dr. Alex Hoffmann�s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultrarich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion, and so begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him. Fiendishly smart and suspenseful, The Fear Index gives us a searing glimpse into an all-too-recognizable world of greed and panic. It is a novel that forces us to confront the question of what it means to be human�and it is Robert Harris�s...… (more)

Publication

Hutchinson, Edition: First Edition.

Media reviews

New York Times

Humans have emerged as the top predators of the biosphere, but Harris warns that a new life form, brilliant and brutal, could be emerging from our algorithms, silicon chips and fiber-optic lines. Corporations aren’t people, he tells us, but they will be alive. Will we survive the rise of the

machines? Lovers of the “Terminator” and “Matrix” films know the answer. In evolution, as with a prospectus, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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Washington Times

Is “The Fear Index” fearmongering? Possibly. Like most dystopian novels, it taps into anxieties - about the mysterious workings of computers in this case. Like the best novels of this genre, it offers something to chew on - and it’s entertaining.'

Wall Street Journal

When the reason behind the eerie incidents becomes apparent, the effect is chilling—and, for some characters, fatal. Only when the plot's smoke clears will certain fussy readers feel their suspension of disbelief plummeting and say: Now, wait a minute. That's another kind of flash crash.

New York Journal of Books

“. . . the premise of The Fear Index by Robert Harris is seriously creepy. . . . The Fear Index is a solid, competent techno-thriller, carefully researched and intelligently executed. If you enjoy this genre—and who doesn’t now and then?—put this one on your to-be-read list.”

USA Today

Foreboding runs through the system of The Fear Index like an IV drip. But if the novel sells itself short anywhere, it's in the author's clearly conscious decision to sacrifice character development for the sake of story pace. Still, it doesn't take a super-computer to know The Fear Index is a

worthwhile investment of your time.

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The Guardian

Grippingly dramatising the workings of the economy (I understood for the first time how hedge funds work), The Fear Index is, in another sense, an economic novel, not merely in its condensed time-scheme but its sparing wordage: though running to more than 400 pages, these are widely spaced and some

carry fewer than 150 words. A speedy read, though, is the appropriate medium for a story in which many of the key events – deep in VIXAL-4's "brain" – take place in milliseconds.

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The Telegraph

Beyond this equivocal virtue, the novel has a sophistication that lifts beyond banker-bashing. Harris takes aim at a corrupted system from a moral and intellectual height that practically induces vertigo. Down at street level, however, his drama sometimes feels sketchy. By chopping between

viewpoints so frequently, Harris hinders emotional engagement with his characters. But given its electric ideas, it seems a pardonable irony if this blazingly ambitious novel occasionally forgets to compute the human element.

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Financial Times

Hoffman is beautifully drawn – an introverted genius who lacks most social skills and has not even noticed that his assistant’s husband has died, he has many unattractive qualities yet catches our sympathy. He is arrogant and disdainful of others but has a vulnerability that his wife loves and

the villain coldly exploits.

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