Infinite Detail

A Novel

By: Tim Maughan

Narrated by: Joe Sims, Marisa Calin

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel

A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the internet.

This program includes a bonus interview between the author and journalist Brian Merchant.

Before: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s become a center of creative counterculture. But it’s fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York City - now the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis?

After: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Mary - who has visions of people presumed dead - is sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Croft’s black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure.

The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the end of the internet, the end of the world as we know it.

©2019 Tim Maughan (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

2019 The Guardian UK Best Books of the Year
2020 Locus Awards Nominee

Is that it?

Story seemed to end abruptly.
Very difficult at times to follow due performers strong accent for some characters.
Interesting thoughts, but just didn’t feel resolved, unless the overt idea is for there to be a series or sequel.
Also, forgot that about 45 minutes of performance was author interview.

Worst Narration I've Heard

The story started well and, to give credit where it's due, the narrator is great with accents. But his delivery is excruciatingly mannered and pretentious, recorded as though the mic was just inches from his mouth, all breathy and overbearing. DNF.

Narrator needs to stop whispering

I couldn’t even finish this book because the narrator is just whispering the whole time. I cannot stand narration like that. Please renarrate and talk normally.

The story, of what ai managed to suffer through, was also fairly boring. Not my cup of tea for sure, but that is a “me” problem. I would have at least been able to finish it if the narration was any good.

Try a sample of the narration before buying.

It's my fault. I should have listened to a sample first. I have just finished Doggerland (a beautifullly narrated story) and went straight into this. It's like listening to a drunk batman competing in a speed reading contest. Unbearable imo. I really shouldn't be rating the narration here. Sorry.

cool story, unbearable reader

As though it is being read by Gordon Ramsey in recovery, hyper dramatic without the sense of irony the book itself cultivates.

The narrator is WAY too intense-

It was almost impossible to get a sense of the story, or for the characters, because the narrator was freakily intense. He injected hystrionic melodrama into almost every aspect of the story - breathing heavily, voice shaking, whispering and then SHRIEKING at times. Ultimately, his over-the-top emoting led me to cringe away from most of the characters, and I doubt that is what the author intended. Perhaps I'll read it on Kindle at some point.

Thinly veiled political propaganda

If you want to be a compelling science fiction story, great. If you want to be a political story, fine. Don't be one while pretending to be the other.

The end of the internet is used as a backdrop in this book while it focuses on themes of how terrible white people are, how terrible cops are, how terrible capitalism is, how terrible corporations are and how terrible government is.

No lessons or allegories, just propaganda ending in hypocritical self-loathing.