The books most like Black Mirror are short story collections, because the show is an anthology: each episode takes one piece of near-future technology and follows it to a disturbing end. Start with George Saunders’s Tenth of December or Ted Chiang’s Exhalation. If you would rather have one long story, read Dave Eggers’s The Circle, about a social media company that turns privacy into a crime.

Black Mirror was created by Charlie Brooker and premiered on Channel 4 on December 4, 2011; it moved to Netflix with series 3 in October 2016, and series 7 was released on April 10, 2025. Brooker has described its subject as “the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time.” The picks below share that focus on technology and everyday life, not the end of the world.

Quick picks

Book Type The Black Mirror connection Audiobook narrator
Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013) Stories Corporate and consumer tech turned on ordinary people; one story became Netflix’s Spiderhead George Saunders
Exhalation by Ted Chiang (2019) Stories AI companions, recorded memory, glimpses of parallel lives Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, Amy Landon, with Ted Chiang
Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017 collection) Stories The ten stories behind Channel 4’s Electric Dreams anthology series Not listed here; linked in print
The Circle by Dave Eggers (2013) Novel A tech giant where “privacy is theft” Dion Graham
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021) Novel A robot companion narrates the family that buys her Sura Siu
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2010) Novel A near-future New York ruled by media, credit scores and a social feed Ali Ahn and Adam Grupper

Short story collections

Tenth of December by George Saunders

The closest match in tone: funny, cruel and humane at once. In “Escape from Spiderhead,” prisoners volunteer as test subjects in a pharmaceutical trial at a high-tech penitentiary; it was filmed as Spiderhead (Netflix, June 17, 2022), directed by Joseph Kosinski with Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller. Saunders reads the Random House Audio edition himself.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Nine stories that treat technology as a moral question rather than a jump scare. “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” follows the people who raise digital beings, and “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” asks what perfect recorded memory does to a life. Knopf published it in May 2019. The audiobook is read by Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman and Amy Landon, with Chiang himself.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

The closest thing to a Black Mirror companion volume. Channel 4, Black Mirror’s original home, also aired Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (Channel 4 from September 17, 2017; Prime Video in the U.S. from January 12, 2018), ten standalone episodes adapted from Dick’s stories. This 2017 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt collection gathers the ten source stories, including “Autofac,” “The Commuter” and “The Hanging Stranger,” with introductions by the screenwriters (hardcover on Amazon ).

Novels

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Mae Holland joins the Circle, a tech company that has absorbed the major social networks, and is gradually drawn into its creed: “Secrets are lies, sharing is caring, privacy is theft.” It is the most direct novel-length version of a Black Mirror premise. The 2017 film with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks was poorly reviewed, so the book is the better way in. Dion Graham reads the Random House Audio edition .

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara, a solar-powered “Artificial Friend,” is chosen as a companion for Josie, a sick teenager, and narrates what she observes of the family. It is quieter and sadder than most of the show. It was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, and a film directed by Taika Waititi, with Jenna Ortega as Klara, has been in development. Sura Siu reads the Random House Audio edition .

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

In a near-future New York where only media, credit and retail still matter, Lenny Abramov falls for Eunice Park; the story is told through Lenny’s diary and Eunice’s messages on a social platform called GlobalTeens. It is satire first, built on the same anxieties about ratings and feeds. Ali Ahn and Adam Grupper read the Recorded Books edition .

If you wanted apocalypse fiction instead

For end-of-the-world novels rather than technology stories, see apocalyptic books for TV fans and whether Station Eleven follows the book .

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