Award-Winning Novel
How far would you go to protect the people you love? Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future—and every government on earth wants to control him.
Synopsis
The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar is a science fiction thriller about Preble Jefferson, a New Yorker who can see five seconds into the future and becomes the target of a government manhunt; it won the 2025 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
When government agencies become aware of his skill, Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family. But as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.
Details
For Readers
The book starts fast and accelerates. It opens with a confrontation on a New York subway and escalates, chapter by chapter, from the smallest police incident to a global standoff, with Preble trying to keep his wife and young son ahead of the people hunting him. It’s a thriller that keeps turning into satire: absurdist about institutions, serious about what they do to people, and interested throughout in the brain as a prediction machine and in what freedom means when systems, not individuals, hold the power.
Tom Sandborn of the Vancouver Sun wrote, “… a book of cinematic velocity and frequent, dark satiric impact. Think of it as a brilliant exercise in multi genre collage, a mash-up of some of the best elements of the thriller, the novel of ideas, anarchism, philosophy and quantum theory. Highly recommended.”
Dads, because the emotional core is a father-son story. Readers who want a page-turner with ideas in it; fans of political satire; readers who appreciate light philosophical absurdity beneath a fast-paced story; anyone who prefers a standalone novel to a series; audiobook listeners (Christian Leatherman narrates).
Jim Fusilli from Writers at Work described it as “One of the most dazzling and inventive [books] I've read in a very long time—a novel I continue to describe as indescribable. Boldizar has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller and Stephen King, and that says much of what you can expect when you enter the world of The Man Who Saw Seconds. I've now read the book twice, and I can't decide if it's a thriller, a farce, a political commentary. I don't know what it is other than I love it."
Read an excerpt
“You need to think like a monster,” Fish said as he and Preble walked out of the Flea House. “Just a little bit. Just enough to crush the other guy’s mind.”
“That’s always your answer.”
Fish’s saggy, anarchic face took on a look of mock hurt. “Chess is war.”
“For you.” This was an old debate that Preble Jefferson found ironic, given their preferred styles. Preble was the current New York state champion in both chessboxing—alternating rounds of chess and boxing—and one-minute bullet chess. Fish played traditional, slow chess. But for Preble, both chess and boxing were fun, social games that helped him train his window. He could never beat…
Awards & Recognition
In the Press
Five Books — #1 Best Thriller
Locus Award — Official Results
Reviews
"The Man Who Saw Seconds is an action thriller that is genuinely thrilling: the pacing is perfect, and the stakes ratchet up in a horrifying, relentless, and seemingly inevitable progression...I hope this can be genre-spanning, and that it gets the attention it deserves from every awards list, science fiction and not."
Alexandra Pierce
"One of the most dazzling and inventive [books] I've read in a very long time—a novel I continue to describe as indescribable. Boldizar has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller and Stephen King, and that says much of what you can expect when you enter the world of The Man Who Saw Seconds. I've now read the book twice, and I can't decide if it's a thriller, a farce, a political commentary. I don't know what it is other than I love it."
Jim Fusilli
"… a book of cinematic velocity and frequent, dark satiric impact. Think of it as a brilliant exercise in multi genre collage, a mash-up of some of the best elements of the thriller, the novel of ideas, anarchism, philosophy and quantum theory. Highly recommended."
Tom Sandborn
"A wildly ambitious masterpiece of speculative fiction that fires on all cylinders. With its blend of audacious ideas, blistering action, emotional heft, and sparkling prose, it instantly establishes Alexander Boldizar as a major voice in sci-fi. Highly recommended for readers looking for a thrilling yet cerebral experience that pushes the boundaries of the genre and the mind itself. A bold, visionary triumph."
"This book has stuck to my ribs in a way I almost can't explain. I flew through it, but in a way that I didn't want to. I wanted to savor it. But the action was so good, it made me keep reading much longer in a sitting than I wanted to. And then I was left with all these questions that I'm still grappling with—which is the best kind of fiction."
Daniel Ford
"This is one that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Boldizar provides us with the thinking man's John Wick, and it makes us ask ourselves some very difficult questions. All the while you will be thoroughly entertained."
"It's a super fun, fast-paced read with a warm heart: Preble's love for and protection of his son. Boldizar has delivered one of my favourite reads of the year. I look forward to reading it again."
"Not only is there much suspense in the novel (there are times, where I just could not put it away), it also has great emotional moments, especially when it's about Preble's relationship to his son, Kaspar."
Germany
"One of the more audacious and emotionally brutal thrillers I've ever read...This one hit me hard in the dadfeels."
Hugo Award-winning author, '10 for 2024'
"Boldizar is passionate about creating complex characters. He believes that fiction is the only art form that can fully immerse both the writer and the reader in the perspectives, life stories, morality, and ethics of entirely different individuals."
What Authors Are Saying
"I can't write a blurb that will do this justice. The Man Who Saw Seconds is everything I want in a book. I absolutely loved it, and you need to read this."
— Rob Hart
Author of Assassins Anonymous
"The Man Who Saw Seconds is wickedly smart, outrageously funny, and unsettling in its accuracy. The satire is pointed, and the action is non-stop. Think: Elmore Leonard meets Nabokov, Michael Crichton meets Vonnegut, Carl Hiaasen meets Joseph Heller. And it has what is probably the best gunfight in literary history. But this book is more than a fast-paced satire. It's a warning for America, for the world, really. And, at its core, it's a poignant love story. The Man Who Saw Seconds is destined to be a classic and, with it, Boldizar's place as one of literature's most important satirical writers is assured."
— Kevin Winchester
Author of The Sunflower Dog
"There are books on brain physiology, books on anarchist philosophy, books on the nature of time. There are certainly books whose hero is pursued by governments of all stripes, books in which the entire world is at stake. There are books whose body counts put Schwarzenegger movies to shame. But there has never been a book to combine all of these with supreme intelligence, set not in some remote future but an all-too-plausible present. The Man Who Saw Seconds is the first."
— Aaron Haspel
Author of Everything
"Alexander Boldizar's brilliantly wild The Man Who Saw Seconds is part thriller, part gunfight (hell of a gunfight), part intellectual examination of what we mean when we say 'freedom,' and all heart. Absurd, hilarious, and deadly serious, this is the rare novel that is both compulsively readable and philosophically deft. If the thought of Kafka as a chess boxer, or Kundera fighting a polar bear excites you, this is definitely the book for you."
— Mark Powell
Author of Hurricane Season
Foreign Editions
French (Éditions Gallmeister) · Japanese (Hayakawa) · Arabic (Dar Shafaq Publishing)
Rights & Representation
Author
Alexander Boldizar
Publisher (Print)
Clash BooksPublisher (Audio)
Simon Maverick (Simon & Schuster)The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar is a science fiction thriller about Preble Jefferson, a New Yorker who can see five seconds into the future. After a confrontation with a police officer on the subway goes wrong, government agencies learn of his ability and a manhunt begins, and Preble must decide how far he will go to protect his wife and young son.
Both. The Man Who Saw Seconds won the 2025 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and was a Foreword INDIES finalist for best thriller. It also won a satire prize, the CIBA Mark Twain Award for Humor and Satire, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in literary fiction. Boldizar changes genres with each novel, and even within one novel has a hard time sticking to one genre.
As Tom Sandborn of the Vancouver Sun wrote, “This is a book of cinematic velocity and frequent, dark satiric impact. Think of it as a brilliant exercise in multi genre collage, a mash-up of some of the best elements of the thriller, the novel of ideas, anarchism, philosophy and quantum theory.”
No. The Man Who Saw Seconds is a standalone novel.
Yes. Beneath the manhunt, the emotional core of The Man Who Saw Seconds is Preble Jefferson's relationship with his three-year-old son, Kasper, and how far a father will go to protect his family.
It was written with dads in mind. The emotional core of The Man Who Saw Seconds is a father protecting his three-year-old son, but all parents seem to understand the main character’s increasingly extreme decisions better than non-parents. Readers of every kind who like fast thrillers with ideas in them have liked it.
Yes, and it has been treated as one since it came out. The Father's Day after publication, in June 2024, The Man Who Saw Seconds was Amazon's #1 Most Gifted book in Science Fiction | Time Travel, and it sells most every June. The reason is the story: a father with five seconds of foresight and a three-year-old son, and how far he will go to protect him.
When Tim Pratt, the Hugo Award-winning author, wrote his The Year in Review: 10 for 2024 list of favourite books for Locus Magazine, he described Seconds as "One of the more audacious and emotionally brutal thrillers I've ever read...This one hit me hard in the dadfeels."
The Man Who Saw Seconds won the 2025 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Finalists included The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey (authors of The Expanse series), Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer, The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow, Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, and other great books, all worth reading.
It was voted by readers in Locus Magazine's open worldwide poll; previous winners of the award include Martha Wells, John Scalzi, Arkady Martine, Ann Leckie, James S.A. Corey, China Miéville, Connie Willis, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, Liu Cixin, Dan Simmons, David Brin, Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov. It was on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2024, won the CIBA Mark Twain Award grand prize for humor and satire, and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES thriller award and the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award.
Yes. The Man Who Saw Seconds audiobook is narrated by Christian Leatherman and published by Simon Maverick, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in September 2025. The paperback and ebook are published by CLASH Books.
The Man Who Saw Seconds is about the brain as a prediction machine, the nature of time, police and state power, and the tension between an individual and the systems built to manage him. It asks whether all institutions end up working against the purpose for which they were created, whether even a father’s love can go too far, and what freedom means in a world where all systems are automated and relentless.
The Man Who Saw Seconds contains violence, including police shootings. Kevin Winchester wrote that the book “has what is probably the best gunfight in literary history” but, keeping with its absurdist-satirical nature, the body count is extraordinarily high. Not for readers who dislike violence.
Soon. The Man Who Saw Seconds is forthcoming in French (Éditions Gallmeister), Japanese (Hayakawa), and Arabic (Dar Shafaq Publishing) translations.
A reader who wants the ideas on the surface. The Ugly is a digressive philosophical comedy about law, language and what thinking is; it rewards patience and reads more like Catch-22 or A Confederacy of Dunces than like a thriller. The Man Who Saw Seconds runs its ideas underneath a fast manhunt. If you loved Catch-22 for the arguments, start with The Ugly; if you loved it for the momentum, start with The Man Who Saw Seconds. Readers who want a female narrator, a conversational tone and no science fiction should go to Ride or Die Girl.
Fast science-fiction thriller with a father-and-son core: The Man Who Saw Seconds. Absurdist literary satire of law school: The Ugly. Dark literary crime with a complex female narrator, set in British Columbia: Ride or Die Girl. All three stand alone; none is a sequel. A side-by-side comparison of the three novels is on the Works page, at boldizar.com/works.
Precognition and limited foresight — Blake Crouch's Dark Matter; Stephen King's The Dead Zone; Philip K. Dick's The Golden Man and Minority Report; Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time
Manhunt thrillers — Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels; Rob Hart's Assassins Anonymous; John Wick, for the fights
Fathers and sons — Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Institutions and their absurdity — Joseph Heller's Catch-22; Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
The surveillance state — Yevgeny Zamyatin's We
Author Kevin Winchester: “Think: Elmore Leonard meets Nabokov, Michael Crichton meets Vonnegut, Carl Hiaasen meets Joseph Heller.”
Not for readers who want: low-violence or cozy science fiction, hard-SF world-building, a series, or a romance.
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