Recommendations based on Zero Historyby William Gibson

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Spook Country

    by William Gibson
    A thriller about a journalist trying to uncover a mysterious plot involving virtual reality technology.

    The first strand of the novel follows Hollis Henry, a former member of the early 1990s cult band The Curfew and a freelance journalist. She is hired by advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend to write a ... (Wikipedia)

  2. Pattern Recognition

    by William Gibson
    A story of a woman's search for truth and identity in a digital world.

    Advertising consultant Cayce Pollard , who reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen , arrives in London in August 2002. She is working on a contract with the marketing firm Blue Ant to ... (Wikipedia)

  3. All Tomorrow's Parties

    by William Gibson
    A journey through a dystopian future, exploring themes of technology and identity.

    The book has three separate but overlapping stories, with the repeated appearance of shared characters. The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, the overarching setting of the trilogy, functions as a ... (Wikipedia)

  4. Anathem

    by Neal Stephenson
    A philosophical novel set in a monastic society, exploring the limits of knowledge.

    Anathem is set on the fictional planet of Arbre. Thousands of years before the events in the novel, the planet's intellectuals entered concents ( monastic communities) to protect their activities ... (Wikipedia)

  5. Reamde

    by Neal Stephenson
    A thrilling adventure story set in the world of online gaming, with an international cast of characters.

    “Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling.” — Time The #1, New York Times, bestselling author of, Anathem, Neal ... (Barnes & Noble)

  6. Cryptonomicon

    by Neal Stephenson
    A thrilling journey through the past and present, combining tech, history and adventure.

    The action takes place in two periods—World War II and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom and Asian financial crisis . In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young United States Navy code ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Kraken

    by China Miéville
    A giant squid goes missing from the Natural History Museum, leading a curator on a surreal journey through London's underground to find it.

    An inexplicable event has occurred at the Natural History Museum, London —a forty-foot specimen of giant squid in formalin has disappeared overnight. Additionally, a murder victim is found folded ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Bangkok 8

    by John Burdett
    An intrepid detective investigates a murder in the seedy underworld of Bangkok.

    A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a ... (Goodreads)

  9. Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street

    by Warren Ellis
    A journalist navigates a dystopian world, exposing corruption and social injustices.

    After years of self-imposed exile from a civilization rife with degradation and indecency, cynical journalist Spider Jerusalem is forced to return to a job that he hates and a city that he loathes. ... (Goodreads)

  10. Annihilation

    by Jeff VanderMeer
    A team of four women venture into a mysterious, surreal landscape in search of answers.

    A team of four women cross the border into an uninhabited area known as "Area X", an unspecified coastal location that has been closed to the public for three decades. The group consists of a ... (Wikipedia)

  11. Neverwhere

    by Neil Gaiman
    A mysterious journey through a hidden realm of London, filled with danger and unexpected allies.

    Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, recently moved from Scotland and with a normal life ahead. ... (Wikipedia)

  12. The City & the City

    by China Miéville
    Two cities that exist in the same space, but with different laws, cultures and regulations.

    When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the ... (Goodreads)

  13. The Magicians

    by Lev Grossman
    A coming-of-age story of a young man's journey to a magical world, learning to wield its power.

    The, New York Times, bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world, now an original series on, SYFY,“,The Magicians, is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a ... (Barnes & Noble)

  14. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

    by Susanna Clarke
    A whimsical tale of two magicians mastering the mysteries of English magic.

    The novel opens in 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, whose members are "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Acceptance

    by Jeff VanderMeer
    A journey of exploration and self-discovery, as humanity faces a mysterious alien power.

    Acceptance jumps around in time and between the perspectives of several characters from the first two novels in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The Lighthouse Keeper In the years before Area X, Saul ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Illuminatus! Trilogy

    by Robert Shea
    An epic adventure spanning multiple continents, uncovering a mysterious worldwide conspiracy.

    It was a deadly mistake. Joseph Malik, editor of a radical magazine, had snooped into rumors about an ancient secret society that was still alive and kicking. Now his offices have been bombed, he's ... (Goodreads)

  17. The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

    by Michael Moorcock
    Elric, a sorcerer and last emperor of Melniboné, travels through time and space to fulfill his destiny.

    The book is divided into three parts. The story begins with Elric lost somewhere in the Young Kingdoms and near the sea. A mysterious ship appears and he is welcomed aboard by its captain and ... (Wikipedia)

  18. The Yiddish Policemen's Union

    by Michael Chabon
    A murder mystery set in an alternate reality, with characters that explore the boundaries of identity and tradition.

    The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Beside the corpse lies an open ... (Wikipedia)

  19. Sundiver

    by David Brin
    Exploring the depths of the Sun for a mysterious alien species.

    The novel begins with the main character, Jacob Demwa, working at the center for uplift on Earth, while he recovers from a tragedy at the Vanilla Space Needle where he saved the space elevator from ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Consider Phlebas

    by Iain M. Banks
    A thrilling space opera about a galactic war between two powerful civilizations.

    The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans ... (Goodreads)

  21. The Forever War

    by Joe Haldeman
    A soldier's story of the horror of war and its consequences in the far future.

    The monumental Hugo and Nebula award winning SF classic— Featuring a new introduction by John Scalzi,The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce ... (Barnes & Noble)

  22. Infinite Jest

    by David Foster Wallace
    A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.

    There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Accelerando

    by Charles Stross
    A sci-fi novel exploring the future of humanity as technology evolves.

    The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular ... (Goodreads)

  24. Collected Fictions

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    An anthology of Borges' masterful short stories, exploring the depths of human thought and imagination.

    Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, ... (Goodreads)

  25. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

    by Max Brooks
    A collection of interviews recounting tales of the zombie apocalypse.

    It has been nearly twenty years since the start of the apocalyptic worldwide pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since the war has ended in humanity's victory. The framing device ... (Wikipedia)

  26. Broken Angels

    by Richard K. Morgan
    A futuristic sci-fi story of a mercenary's mission to uncover a military conspiracy.

    Approximately 30 years after, Altered Carbon, , Takeshi Kovacs is now serving in Carrera's Wedge, a mercenary organization that joins a war on a distant planet, Sanction IV, fighting against an ... (Wikipedia)

  27. The Water Knife

    by Paolo Bacigalupi
    In a future where water is scarce, three individuals fight for control of the dwindling resource in the American Southwest.

    In a future hammered by climate change and drought, mountain snows have turned to rain, and rain evaporates before it hits the ground. In a fragmenting United States, the cities of Phoenix and Las ... (Goodreads)

  28. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

    by Douglas Adams
    An eccentric detective's surreal journey through time and space to solve a mysterious case.

    Richard MacDuff attends the Coleridge dinner at his old college St Cedd's , where he witnesses his former tutor, Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis , perform an inexplicable magic trick in which he ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Lost in a Good Book

    by Jasper Fforde
    A journey through the magical world of fiction as a character attempts to find a way out of the book.

    Three months after the events of The Eyre Affair , Thursday Next is happily married to Landen Parke-Laine and working as a literary detective out of Swindon . One day, Thursday meets her father, a ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Time Out of Joint

    by Philip K. Dick
    A man discovers reality is not as it seems, and he must find a way to uncover the truth.

    Ragle Gumm lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper contest called "Where Will The Little Green Man ... (Wikipedia)