11 new science fiction and fantasy book releases to make your May magical

May 2021 release: Version Zero – David Yoon

Bestselling author David Yoon is known for his utterly charming contemporary YA novels Frankly in Love and Super Fake Love Song, but Version Zero marks his highly-anticipated adult science fiction debut. A thrilling, humorous tale of three twentysomethings who team up with a reclusive tech genius to bring down evil internet companies, it’s a frighteningly timely story that engages with some of the most pressing problems facing our increasingly digitized world.

The story follows Max, a data expert at the social media company Wren (which is basically Facebook) who discovers the dark side of Silicon Valley when he asks too many questions about Wren’s data collection policies and finds himself blacklisted within the industry. So he and his friend Akiko decide that the only thing they can do is break the internet – literally.

Yoon spent over a dozen years working in the tech industry as an interface designer and user experience expert immersed in all the cultural and technical workings of core online industries like advertising technology, social media, cybersecurity, content strategy.  He became interested in the paradox that these companies tended to believe they were doing big things to make the world a better place while the staff behind these platforms had a serious mistrust and disdain for the very things they were creating.

The official synopsis describes the story as follows.

"Max, a data whiz at the Facebook-like social media company Wren, has gotten a firsthand glimpse of the dark side of big tech. When he starts asking questions about what his company is doing with the data they collect, he finds himself fired…and then blackballed across all of Silicon Valley. With time on his hands and inside knowledge about the biggest tech companies, Max and his longtime friend—and sometime crush—Akiko, decide to get even by…essentially, rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them. But when Max and Akiko join forces with a reclusive tech baron, they learn that breaking things can have unintended—and disastrous—consequences. And those consequences will ripple across the world, effecting every level of society in ways no one could have imagined."

Version Zero is available on May 25.

What are you adding to your must-read list this May? Let us know in the comments.