Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Review

‘I’ve never read anything like Uncanny Valley, which is both a searching bird’s-eye study of an industry and a generation as well as an intimate, microscopic portrait of ambition and hope and dread. Anna Wiener writes about the promise and the decay of Silicon Valley with the impossibly pleasurable combination of a precise, razored intellect and a soft, incandescent heart. Her memoir is diagnostic and exhilarating, a definitive document of a world in transition’ Jia Tolentino, New York Times-bestselling author of Trick Mirror 

‘Joan Didion at a start-up’ Rebecca Solnit, bestselling author of Men Explain Things To Me

‘This was the memoir I’d been waiting for. A witty, unique perspective and fresh insight showing us the behind the scenes of the tech industry in a new thrilling way’ Emma Gannon

‘Uncanny Valley is a generation-defining account of the amoral late-capitalist tech landscape we are fatally enmeshed in. …Insightful, compelling and urgent’ Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

‘Uncanny Valley is an addictive combination of coming-of-age story, journalistic memoir, and brilliant social critique. This is a stunningly good book. I loved it’ Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

‘This much-anticipated memoir of Anna Wiener’s time spent working in San Francisco’s booming, seductive tech industry is guaranteed to make you think differently about the role apps command in our everyday lives’ Vogue

‘Wiener’s compulsive debut memoir chronicles her journey from proud late-adopter to true believer, forging on into burnout territory and beyond. It’s a wry, crisply written tale of optimism and hubris, idealism and misogyny. While it often reads like sci-fi, it’s also a kind of horror story, one in which we are all – through inattention, if nothing else – complicit’ Daily Mail