What Fiction About Silicon Valley Gets Wrong
Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash
As an entrepreneur, I look for market opportunities. As an author, I’ve often heard the advice to “write what you know.” So, naturally, when I decided to write my first novel, I chose contemporary Silicon Valley as my venue— seeing it both as a market opportunity and what I know, having spent the majority of my career in Silicon Valley tech start-ups.
My inspiration was, and remains, to write not just one book, but to mine the rich material of this area and era to spawn what I sometimes describe as the “Silicon Valley corporate thriller” genre—like The Firm created the legal thriller genre, Hunt for Red October the military thriller genre, and The Da Vinci Code the historical religious thriller genre. (If only I could realize similar good fortune!)
So, like any good entrepreneur, I started with market research and read all the novels I could find that fit my target genre. My first observation? There wasn’t much. In spite of the disproportionate attention Silicon Valley receives in the media and a long list of best-selling business books, memoirs, and narrative non-fiction, there have been relatively few novels about Silicon Valley.
There are probably several reasons for this scarcity, including a New York bias in publishing, low literary interest (and aptitude) in technology, the perspective that Silicon Valley is simply too mainstream for publishers appropriately seeking under-represented voices, and the limited commercial success of the few Silicon Valley-based novels that have been published. Whatever the reason, the fact is Silicon Valley’s dominance in non-fiction hasn’t translated to the fiction aisle.
Why?
I posit that no novel has yet really captured the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley. While I loved The Circle by Dave Eggers (and, update, The Every), The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, and The Warehouse by Rob Hart, I wanted to write something that offered more of an explanation of how Silicon Valley’s unique culture evolved, while feeling authentic to tech insiders like myself.
So, I started keeping this list of pitfalls that, in my estimation, novels about Silicon Valley have fallen into—as much advice to myself as commentary on the existing bodies of work. Here’s my take on what stories about Silicon Valley tend to get wrong:
Outsiders are kept outside — what has made novels about the CIA or Wall Street work is they give outsiders a genuine feel for what it would be like to live in that world. Most novels about Silicon Valley feel like they are told from an outsider’s perspective, making the story feel touristy and flat.
Good and bad are too obvious — unambiguous protagonists and antagonists make for a feel-good novel or movie. Good guys have no shortcomings and bad guys are consciously and deliberately evil. But that’s not how people in Silicon Valley think. Everyone thinks they’re doing good. Everyone believes they’re “making the world a better place.” This nuance, that sometimes good intentions can go wrong, is often lost.
Focused on companies, not the culture — many novels, thrillers especially, focus too much of the narrative on the company central to the plot. But Silicon Valley is a broader ecosystem than one company. People go in and out of dozens of companies over their career, and that dynamic fosters a very unique culture.
Technology is treated as unfamiliar — For the most part, the publishing world is not filled with early adopters. Many see tech as boring. But to tell a story about Silicon Valley start-ups, it’s necessary to talk about technology. Too many novels omit or dumb down the tech. This tendency particularly ruins the story for the majority of readers for whom technology is an integral part of their everyday lives. Almost all of us interact with tech brands every day. Make it a credible part of the narrative.
Details are missing or wrong — the language and lingo of technology and business can feel obscure at times, but nothing gives a story authenticity like getting those details right. Too often, novels omit or mangle the way people in tech companies actually speak, which makes the story feel inauthentic.
Greed is not the biggest motivator — from afar, it’s easy to focus on the ostentatious wealth of Silicon Valley, but that isn’t what motivates most people I know. It’s more about ego, envy, and esteem. Sure, making a bunch of money feeds that, but it’s more of a byproduct than a core driver — just as fame is the primary motivator of Hollywood. In both worlds, money is just a way to keep score for what really motivates people.
Self-selection is the unifying trait — unlike most other cities that have a foundational common culture, Silicon Valley is literally comprised of people from all over the world. For a story to be about people in Silicon Valley, it has to understand what motivated such an incredibly diverse group of people to be here in the first place, whether they’re from Boston or Bangalore. The unifying trait is that they all had the ambition and initiative to come here, and that is what makes their story interesting.
Portrayed as science fiction — while people in tech are always pushing the boundaries of innovation, we also have a keen eye for what’s far fetched or unrealistic. Too many novels tip into fantastical portrayals of what technology can do, making them feel more like science fiction than contemporary stories.
This list will probably grow the more I read. I don’t presume that my first novel captures Silicon Valley any better than its predecessors. But with these guideposts, I will continue to try to document the world I know through fiction.