The Futurist (2006)

We know him only as Yates, a world-renowned, deeply self-loathing futurist whose ranting speech at the ''Futureworld'' conference in Johannesburg is meant to kamikaze his career. Instead, he gets launched by vaguely sinister pseudo-corporate interests on a booze-soaked stumble across the globe to make some sense of the World We Live in Now — which, as a topic for a debut novel, is kinda broad. Yet James P. Othmer (a former adman) never lets his book get away from him, pushing right up to the edge of satire but never over it. Indeed, The Futurist is at turns glib, trenchant, cynical, heartfelt, daffy, and harrowing — often on the same page.