The race is on. Who will write the Great Silicon Valley Novel?
Aha! To even pose the question is to fall into the moist clutches of back-flap copywriters. Not since the 1849 gold rush has Northern California seen this kind of cash, speculation, and hype. And the players! Has a more unlikely group of geeks, capitalists, and technovisionaries ever been assembled? Mix in ridiculous amounts of money and the very real power to change the world and you've got, among other things, a sea of novelistic possibilities.
For all its eccentricity and idealism, the business of Silicon Valley is business; and however outrageous their prose and plots, the first crop of Silicon Valley novels are rooted in a few low tech, crowd-pleasing themes that haven't varied since the Old Testament: power, greed, lust, and betrayal.
The outrageous plot of Pat Dillon's The Last Best Thing revolves around a charismatic entrepreneur intent on capitalizing on the "last best thing" before his motley crew has actually, uh, designed it. Along the way we encounter laptops that burst into flame, a mysterious email dominatrix, and a terrorist plot to kidnap Bill Gates. Even though the characters don't quite ring true, this is a spirited romp from an observant Valley insider. Worth picking up.
Even better is Po Bronson's The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, which manages to tell a compelling tale of greed and idealism in the Valley without resorting to flame-spewing laptops, miraculous technological breakthroughs, or Bill Gates. The narrative follows a team of hardcore coders and engineers at a prototypical high-powered research lab as they try to build a US$300 computer. A restrained sense of satire and minimal "outrageousness," along with convincing detail and 3-D characters, set this novel apart.
No doubt half-a-dozen novelists are presently polishing their burlesques of Silicon Valley. Bring 'em on, I say - there's plenty of room.
The Last Best Thing: A Classic Tale of Greed, Deception, and Mayhem in Silicon Valley, by Pat Dillon: US$23. Simon & Schuster: +1 (212) 698 7541. The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel, by Po Bronson: $23. Random House: (800) 726 0600, +1 (410) 848 1900.
STREET CRED
The Coming Crisis?Electric Avenue
Tales of Silicon Fiction
