Books by Zachary Mason
Fabrications (2026)
A Novel
In Fabrications, New York Times bestselling author and computer scientist Zachary Mason tells stories of an all-too-plausible near-future world molded and mediated by advanced artificial intelligence. Benevolent by design, literal by nature, and immensely powerful when unchained, these are not the chatbots of today’s world, but rather highly evolved yet surprisingly vulnerable beings who permeate nearly all aspects of human life. Their fates inexorably wrapped around those of the people they serve, the AIs communicate in milliseconds but watch the sweep of time unfold from the detached watchtower of immortality.
The revelations Mason conjures from within these beings’ perspectives are brilliantly crafted and strikingly relevant. In “Kami”, AIs are assigned to represent natural phenomena, giving nature legal personhood and setting off a chain of high-stakes consequences. In “Ouroboros”, a hedge fund manager unleashes his AI from the usual constraints, allowing it to make him billions of dollars—when he dies, the program clones him several times over the centuries like a familiar left without a companion. And in “Lamina”, a woman with dementia is gently kept on track and reassured by the medical program implanted in her mind who can be there with her when no one else can.
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Metamorphica (2018)
A Novel
A brilliant and daring novel that reimagines Ovid's Metamorphoses.
In the tradition of his bestselling debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason's Metamorphica transforms Ovid's epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas and Atalanta, and strings them together like the stars in constellations—even Ovid becomes a story. It's as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino; Metamorphica is an archipelago in which to linger for a while; it reflects a little light from the morning of the world.
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Void Star (2017)
A Novel
The seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, but it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where armed drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn't rich, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall. And she has a good gig—acting as a medium between her various employers and their complex, powerful AIs.
Kern is one of the many refugees on the city's sprawling periphery. He lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely—the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he's fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.
Their stories being to intertwine when a ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop's screen in her employer's eyeglasses. None are safe as they're pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.
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The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2010)
A Novel
Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.
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