The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson Review

The Affinities is the first book by Robert Charles Wilson I have read. He is a science fiction writer who has won multiple awards including the Hugo, The Philip K. Dick Award, and the Campbell Award. The book starts with a young Adam Fisk having a struggling to find his place in life. He decides to take the affinities test, the affinities tests are a mash of genetic, behavioral testing and brain mapping, hoping to match to one of the twenty-two Affinities.
Adam tests into one of the Affinities and his life changes in ways that he could not imagine.Troubles that he had just disappear, his Affinity becomes the family that everyone wishes they had. It's a dream for those who test into an Affinity, not so much for those who do not test into one. It is a thoughtful and sometimes scary read. It was a great introduction to a new to me author that I look forward to reading more from.

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson

 

In our rapidly-changing world of "social media", everyday people are more and more able to sort themselves into social groups based on finer and finer criteria. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's The Affinities, this process is supercharged by new analytic technologies--genetic, brain-mapping, behavioral. To join one of the twenty-two Affinities is to change one's life. It's like family, and more than family. Your fellow members aren't just like you, and they aren't just people who are likely to like you. They're also the people with whom you can best cooperate in all areas of life--creative, interpersonal, even financial.
At loose ends both professional and personal, young Adam Fisk takes the suite of tests to see if he qualifies for any of the Affinities, and finds that he's a match for one of the largest, the one called Tau. It's utopian--at first. Problems in all areas of his life begin to simply sort themselves out, as he becomes part of a global network of people dedicated to helping one another--to helping him.
But as the differing Affinities put their new powers to the test, they begin to rapidly chip away at the power of governments, of global corporations, of all the institutions of the old world. Then, with dreadful inevitability, the different Affinities begin to go to war--with one another.
What happens next will change Adam, and his world, forever. -Amazon Description