Technology thrillers are not really about technology.
They may feature dating apps, cyber breaches, artificial intelligence, surveillance systems or digital identities. But the technology merely creates the possibility. Human beings create the conflict.
Someone conceals a choice. Someone exploits a vulnerability. An insider carries an unresolved grievance. A professional reputation is quietly dismantled. An institution places its trust in the wrong person. A country builds a powerful system only to discover that power does not always remain under the control of those who created it.
That is what makes a good technology thriller unsettling. Its fictional crisis usually begins with something recognisable: temptation, ambition, resentment, fear or misplaced trust.
Readers visiting the Ahmedabad International Book Festival 2026, being held at the Sabarmati Riverfront from 24 October to 1 November, may find several kinds of such stories across its stalls. Some will be classified as cyber thrillers or techno-thrillers. Others may appear under crime, espionage, corporate fiction, science fiction or geopolitical suspense.
The label matters less than the question at the heart of the story: What happens when technology amplifies a very human weakness?
What makes a thriller a technology thriller?
A technology thriller uses technological change to create danger, uncertainty or unequal power. The threat could emerge from:
- A private conversation that becomes permanently searchable
- A dating profile created with a false identity
- An employee with legitimate access to sensitive information
- A digital trail that reveals more than its owner intended
- A cyber breach designed to create suspicion rather than steal money
- Artificial intelligence making decisions at a scale no individual can monitor
- Surveillance technology being repurposed against the people it was meant to protect
- A corporate platform becoming strategically important to a nation
However, including computers in a story does not automatically make it a technology thriller. Technology must materially change what characters can do, what they know, what they fear or whom they can trust.
If the same plot could unfold unchanged without the technology, it is probably only a conventional thriller with digital decoration.
Why these stories feel increasingly real
In older thrillers, a secret might be hidden in a locked drawer. Today, it may exist in a screenshot, cloud backup, location record, deleted message or account controlled by someone else.
Technology has altered the life of a secret.
It can preserve a moment after everyone involved wishes to forget it. It can move information between people who have never met. It can make an accusation visible before anyone has established whether it is true. It can allow one person to imitate another; and give an apparently ordinary individual access to capabilities that once belonged only to large institutions.
This does not mean that technology creates every danger. More often, it gives existing human motives greater reach. Greed can travel faster. Revenge can be automated. Deception can be scaled. Suspicion can be manufactured. A mistake made in private can acquire a public life of its own. Technology thrillers make these invisible changes visible by placing characters inside their consequences.
The human being is often the real vulnerability
Popular descriptions of cyber risk tend to focus on malicious code, compromised systems and sophisticated hackers. Fiction can look elsewhere.
Why did someone click?
Why did an intelligent person overlook a warning?
Why did an employee share information they knew was sensitive?
Why did colleagues believe an accusation before examining the evidence?
Why did an insider decide that access entitled them to revenge?
Why did an organisation’s response deepen the damage?
These questions take us beyond technical failure and into human behaviour. A system may be well protected and still remain vulnerable to the people authorised to use it. A competent professional may still act irrationally when love, shame, fear or ambition enters the decision. An organisation may contain a breach yet fail to contain the suspicion created by it.
That is fertile ground for fiction because the characters need not be foolish for the plot to work. They only need to be human.
Technology thrillers can operate at three levels
The scale of the threat helps distinguish different kinds of technology-driven fiction.
The intimate
At this level, technology enters personal relationships. A dating app, private photograph, concealed message or fabricated profile can alter the balance of power between two people. The stakes may involve love, family, friendship, embarrassment or blackmail.
The technology is close to everyday life, which is precisely why the danger feels believable.
The institutional
Here, the conflict moves into companies, professional networks, media organisations or government institutions.
The consequences may include career destruction, corporate sabotage, data leakage, manipulation of public perception or the collapse of trust inside an organisation. A cyber incident becomes more than a technical event because people must decide whom to blame, what to disclose and which version of events to believe.
The international
At the largest scale, technology becomes part of national power.
Artificial intelligence, semiconductor supply chains, cyber operations, autonomous systems, information warfare and critical infrastructure can shape relations between countries. The thriller may ask whether a system intended to provide an advantage can be controlled; or whether the competition to build it creates risks that no country can manage alone.
These three levels may appear to belong to different worlds. They are connected by one idea: technology changes the reach and consequences of human choices.
From dating-app deception to corporate cyber intrigue
My two published novels explore the first two levels of this progression.
Love Swipe Blackmail begins with a private temptation. Ravi is in a happy relationship with Vandana, yet downloads a dating app in search of something beyond it. What appears to be a personal indiscretion creates a digital trail, and gives someone else the power to control what happens next.
The novel uses the dating app as the entry point, but its deeper concerns are trust, secrecy, shame, loyalty and friendship. Ravi’s vulnerability does not arise merely because a platform exists. It arises because he makes a choice he cannot comfortably admit; and someone recognises the power created by that silence.
Shadow Play: Love And Blackmail enlarges the canvas. When eerily similar cyber breaches cost Ravi and Raaj their careers, apparent professional negligence begins to look like a coordinated campaign. Fake companies, digital honey traps, information leaks and hidden grievances draw individuals, businesses and national-security institutions into the conflict.
The central question changes. It is no longer only, “What happens when a secret is exposed?” It becomes, “What happens when suspicion itself is engineered?”
Some cyberattacks steal data. Others may be designed to destroy credibility. Once colleagues, customers or institutions begin to doubt someone, reputational harm can continue even when the technical breach has been contained.
Together, the two books move from the intimate to the institutional; from trust within relationships to trust within organisations.
What comes after the institutional?
The next part of the LSBVerse will move from the institutional to the international.
The forthcoming novel is an AI-centred geopolitical thriller involving India and China. It explores artificial intelligence not only as a technical capability, but as an instrument of national strategy, corporate influence and international competition.
At that scale, trust becomes more difficult to locate.
Can a country trust technology developed through private companies? Can an institution trust information produced by an intelligent system it cannot fully explain? Can allies trust one another when technological advantage is unevenly distributed? Can nations slow down the development of a dangerous capability when they fear that their competitors will continue?
The progression across the LSBVerse is therefore Intimate to Institutional to International. The technology changes. But the underlying human questions remain.
What should readers look for in a technology thriller?
While browsing the Ahmedabad International Book Festival, do not judge a technology thriller by the quantity of technical terminology in its description.
Instead, ask – Does the technology alter the choices available to the characters?
It should create a new capability, temptation, vulnerability or imbalance. Not merely appear in the background.
Is the human behaviour believable?
A strong thriller does not need its characters to make obviously foolish decisions. Their errors should emerge from emotions and pressures we recognise.
Are the consequences larger than the initial act?
The most compelling plots often begin with something small: one swipe, one message, one grievance, one unauthorised disclosure. The thriller grows by showing how that act travels through relationships and institutions.
Does the story understand trust?
Technology depends on trust in identities, interfaces, colleagues, evidence and institutions. A good technology thriller examines what happens when one of those assumptions fails.
Can a non-technical reader follow the story?
Technology should intensify the conflict, not bury it under jargon. The reader should understand what is at stake without needing professional expertise in cybersecurity or artificial intelligence.
Technology thriller, cyber thriller or science fiction?
These genres overlap, but they are not identical. A cyber thriller generally centres on digital systems, hacking, cybercrime, data or networked conflict.
A technology thriller is broader. It may involve dating platforms, surveillance, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, corporate platforms or other technologies that reshape power and behaviour.
Science fiction may imagine technologies or societies that do not yet exist. A technology thriller usually stays closer to the present or a recognisable near future, even when it extrapolates beyond current capabilities.
Many novels can belong to more than one category. Readers need not become overly concerned with labels. The better question is whether the premise and stakes interest them.
Discovering the right technology thriller at the festival
When you visit the festival, describe the kind of conflict you enjoy rather than asking only for “a tech book.” You might ask for:
- A fast-paced thriller involving digital deception
- A corporate conspiracy centred on insider access
- A relationship thriller shaped by dating technology
- A novel about cybersecurity without excessive jargon
- An espionage story involving artificial intelligence
- A geopolitical thriller about technological competition
- A story in which reputation, rather than money, is the target
You may find such books under crime, mystery, corporate fiction, espionage or contemporary Indian writing, not necessarily on a shelf labelled “technology.”
Love Swipe Blackmail and Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail will be available at the Ahmedabad International Book Festival. Stall details will be added once provided by NBT – usually this happens just a day before the fest. So revisit this article on 23rd October.
Frequently asked questions
What is a technology thriller?
A technology thriller is a suspense story in which technology materially affects the conflict, the choices available to the characters or the balance of power between them. Its real subject is often human behaviour rather than machinery.
Do I need technical knowledge to enjoy a technology thriller?
No. A well-written technology thriller explains enough for readers to understand the risk without overwhelming them with jargon. The technology supports the story; it should not replace it.
Are technology thrillers and cyber thrillers the same?
Cyber thrillers are a subset of technology thrillers. They usually focus on hacking, data, digital systems or cybercrime. Technology thrillers can also involve dating platforms, surveillance, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and other emerging capabilities.
What is Love Swipe Blackmail about?
It is a mystery thriller about a dating app, private temptation and digital exposure. At its heart, it explores trust, secrecy, intimate betrayal and the friends who refuse to abandon one of their own.
What is Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail about?
It is a corporate technology thriller in which similar cyber breaches destroy two careers and point towards a deliberate campaign. The story explores social engineering, reputational harm, insider vulnerability, revenge and institutional trust.
Are the two novels connected?
Yes. They belong to the same fictional universe, the LSBVerse, and share characters. The first focuses on intimate deception; the second expands into corporate and institutional conflict.
Which book should I read first?
Reading Love Swipe Blackmail first provides the complete progression of the characters and the LSBVerse. However, readers particularly interested in corporate cyber intrigue can understand the principal conflict of Shadow Play independently.
Will the books be available at Ahmedabad International Book Festival 2026?
Yes, they would be available. Availability and stall details will be added once received form NBT.