American Gods

An ex-convict called Shadow takes a job with a man called Wednesday and ends up driving across the United States in the middle of a war between the old gods immigrants brought with them and the new ones the country has made — media, markets, technology. The book that fixed Gaiman’s reputation as a novelist rather than a comics writer.

Context: third of the four titles under the a16z list’s Gaiman author entry, and the most ambitious. Its premise — that a society’s actual objects of worship can be read off what it pays attention to — is the reason it keeps getting cited well outside fantasy.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from; Fantasy section, Gaiman author entry.
• Neil Gaiman — the author.
• Good Omens — first of the four selected works.
• Stardust — second of the four.
• Anansi Boys — fourth of the four, which shares a character with this one.
• a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates the list.