I have a lot of thoughts about The Genius Plague. I'll be pulling together a longer review. For now...

I think my favorite reading of this is as a critique of how intelligent people are herded into dangerous reinforcing thought bubbles by social media. It stands on it's own as an accelerating apocalyptic thriller, but it's hard to not see modern parallels or an interesting rehash of the Singularity.

I kept returning to the ideas of [b:Blindsight|48484|Blindsight (Firefall, #1)|Peter Watts|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924412s/48484.jpg|47428]. Does a powerful, efficient organism need to be self aware? Does intelligence need consciousness?

While more clearly a zombie apocalypse story, [b:The Girl with All the Gifts|17235026|The Girl with All the Gifts|M.R. Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403033579s/17235026.jpg|23753235] explores many of the same concepts, specifically the intelligent infected and the fungal nature of the threat. Interesting to read two very different takes on these ideas.

The book comes to a satisfying conclusion, but it's left with plenty of potential either for future stories or for personal thought experiments.