Zachary Mason (born 1974) is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and novelist. He wrote the New York Times bestselling '' The Lost Books of the Odyssey'' (2007; revised edition 2010), a variation on Homer, and ''

Void Star Void Star is a 2017 near-future science fiction novel by American writer Zachary Mason. It is his second novel, published after '' The Lost Books of the Odyssey''. Set in a near-future San Francisco, the book explores themes of artificial intell ...

'' (2017), a science fiction novel about artificial intelligence. In 2018, he published ''Metamorphica'', based on

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...

''. Mason grew up in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, attended

Bard College at Simon's Rock Bard College at Simon's Rock (more commonly known as Simon's Rock) is a private residential liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It is a unit of Bard College, which is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The school is ...

, and received a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

from

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

, publishing his thesis ''A computational, corpus-based metaphor extraction system'' in 2002. He works for a Silicon Valley startup.

References

External links

"The Machine Edda," by Zachary Mason in Guernica
- April 26, 2008
A.I., the Simulated Annealing Search, and ''The Lost Books of the Odyssey'': An Interview with Zachary Mason
- Washington City Paper, Mar. 4, 2010
The Truth About AI: A Secular Ghost Story by Zachary Mason in The Paris Review
- Dec. 20, 2018 Brandeis University alumni 1974 births Living people Bard College alumni Writers from California American male novelists 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers American computer scientists {{US-novelist-1970s-stub