The Silicon Valley Novel

In this article we propose that one of the emergent, but under-charted, and as yet unnamed thematic strands in recent American fiction and that contributes to recent literary history is that of the ‘Silicon Valley novel’. The trend can be seen in the literary fiction of Tony Tulathimutte, Jarett Kobek, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Dave Eggers, to name but a few, but also in the trilogy of novels by Ann Bridges dubbed, ‘The Silicon Valley Trilogy’. Silicon Valley novels are concerned with the emergent technological industry in the Bay Area but they are also of a specific periodising moment. Hence, while named for the geography, we here situate the Silicon Valley novel as more tied to time in the early twenty-first century.