New Novels and Movies Ask: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Tech? – The Wall Street Journal

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“Tech is so much more a part of our day-to-day lives now and we are so aware of the creepiness,” said

Dan Lyons,

a former writer on the HBO show “Silicon Valley” who has published fiction and nonfiction books about the tech world. “It becomes a more ripe target for novelists.”

In the books, fictionalized doppelgängers with names like Cloud, TheShop or Beetle have grown so big, no government can regulate them. The novels coincide with mounting criticism of big tech firms in the real world. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of states is preparing to move forward with a joint antitrust investigation of big technology companies, according to people familiar with the situation, adding another layer of scrutiny to an industry already under a spotlight.

On the fictionalized tech firms portrayed in the novels, Google and Amazon declined to comment, while Facebook and Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment. Generally the companies say they operate fairly and don’t engage in anticompetitive behavior.

“The Warehouse,” a book about a giant online retailer called Cloud, debuted in the U.S. on Tuesday. Employees live in corporate dorms and risk injury sprinting across warehouse floors to hit productivity targets; wristbands track inhabitants’ movements. When a corporate spy starts to dig into Cloud’s secrets, trouble follows.

The book has been optioned for the screen, with Imagine Entertainment beating out several other bidders in a high six-figure deal.

Ron Howard

has been named as a likely director, according to people familiar with the deal.

The novel, which author

Rob Hart

sold to Crown in a six-figure publishing deal, is being released in more than 20 languages. Editor

Julian Pavia,

who also worked on hits “The Martian” by

Andy Weir

and

Ernest Cline

’s “Ready Player One,” told a ballroom full of booksellers at a publishing conference this spring that after reading the novel, he could never look at a cardboard box on his doorstep the same way again. “We’re heading to a really scary place where we’re trading our privacy for convenience,” says Mr. Hart.

Today’s works build on a long literary tradition of dystopian tech themes, as successive generations of authors have plumbed the dark side of scientific advancement.

Aldous Huxley

’s “Brave New World,” published in 1932, explored the ways technology can fuel authoritarianism. “The Minority Report,” a 1956 short story by

Philip K. Dick,

examined the dangers in a future world of unchecked technology where attempts to predict human behavior are the norm. In

Octavia E. Butler

’s 1993 novel “Parable of the Sower,” technology has failed to save humankind and left people looking beyond Earth for a better society.

The latest novels put an often satirical twist on tech themes. Several focus on the dangers of a single company that will do anything to maintain its power, ideas raised in recent years with books like “The Circle” by Dave Eggers.

“QualityLand,” for instance, which debuts in the U.S. in January, is an edgy comedy that imagines a government bent on securing growth at any cost while catering to the needs of big business. Already a hit in Germany, author

Marc-Uwe Kling

’s home market, the book’s upcoming U.S. cover evokes the design of an Amazon box. Mike Judge, co-creator of the HBO comedy “Silicon Valley,” has optioned the novel for another HBO series he would executive produce and co-write for the network.

In the book, protagonist Peter Jobless’s life spins out of control after a drone mistakenly delivers him a pink vibrator. The item comes from TheShop, an online retailer that knows what everyone wants before they want it. Peter embarks on a risky quest to return the item, even though his attempts to do so reveal troubles with TheShop’s all-powerful algorithm.

Meanwhile, a friendly android runs for president against a racist human. Mr. Kling likes the idea of readers wondering whether they should root for the robot. “Nobody wants a bad machine,” said Mr. Kling, 37. “But do we want the good machine? That’s an interesting question.”

Other novels explore fears about privacy. In “Zed,” out in January, British novelist

Joanna Kavenna

wants to tease out a reversal she sees happening: She believes that instead of people being private and government being transparent, people are increasingly exposed and government is more secretive.

The vehicle for her satire is the mega-company “Beetle,” based on an amalgam of tech firms, she said. Citizens wear Beetlebands that track their personal data and generate predictions, including the probable date of the users’ deaths.

The novel starts with news that a Beetle staff member has murdered his wife and two sons, an event that the infallible algorithms did not predict. While a police officer investigates how the technology misfired, a headless anti-terror droid thinks it has found the killer and fatally shoots the innocent man in the face.

“When does the system become something you can no longer escape?” asked Ms. Kavenna. “At what point does it become you can’t opt out—you have no choice?”

Author

Jessica Powell,

in “The Big Disruption,” wants to prod her tech audience into some self-reflection. A former head of communications at Google, Ms. Powell sees the fictional tech giant in her novel as a nuanced villain. Released in print this spring, the Silicon Valley spoof features a tech company called Anahata, which is developing a secret project to defeat its competitors. The company’s grand vision includes putting a campus on the moon so its vaunted engineers won’t be constrained by Earth’s laws or lured away by rivals. (She said the book isn’t based on Google.)

The satire describes an email chain that starts with sales people complaining that engineers should be required to wear shoes to the office and spins into an inane war involving lawyers and talk about personal freedom. “I find your email really offensive,” one employee writes. “I’m adding a whole bunch of other people to this thread to confirm my opinion.”

“I wanted something I felt like tech people would laugh at and see themselves in,” Ms. Powell said, “but they’d also stick around to hopefully take in some of the criticism.”

Write to Ellen Gamerman at [email protected]