20th Century Fox has acquired the rights to Daniel Suarez's upcoming sci-fi novel Influx. The story is set in a world where a secret organization suppresses emerging technologies to prevent widespread change in a futuristic society, and shows what happens to an inventor who is shut down by this covert group.

Take a look at the official plot description for this upcoming novel, which will be published on February 20 by Dutton.

"What if our civilization is more advanced than we know?

The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon--"the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured" -Publishers Weekly) --imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.

Are smart phones really humanity's most significant innovation since the moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century--fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, cures for common disease, extended human life, and a host of other world-changing advances--have remained beyond our grasp? Why has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960's failed to arrive?

Perhaps it did arrive...but only for a select few.

Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics--the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.

They are living in our future.

Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?

And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?"

Although the project doesn't have a writer, director or producers attached at this time, the studio has attracted high-profile directors to adaptations such as this in the recent past. David Fincher directed the studio's upcoming adaptation of Gone Girl, which stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, and they are also developing Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for Tim Burton.

Daniel Suarez, a former information technology consultant, self-published his first novel Daemon in 2006, before Dutton picked it up and released it in 2009. His other novels include Freedom (2010) and Kill Decision (2012).