Five essential 9/11 books

David L. Ulin is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith and book critic at the Los Angeles Times.

One of his five essential 9/11 books:

"Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson (2003).

The first — and still, in many ways, the best — book of fiction to emerge from the tragedy, Gibson's novel came out less than 18 months after the collapse of the twin towers, yet it evokes the post-Sept. 11 world of paranoia, inference and conspiracy so acutely that it's almost as if he dreamed it into being. Gibson, of course, was ideally suited for the challenge; his books had dealt with such issues since the 1980s, making "Pattern Recognition" a kind of speculative fiction in reverse, a novel in which the line between future and present has irrevocably blurred.

Read about another book on Ulin's list.

Learn about why Gibson decided to set Pattern Recognition in the present, unlike his previous novels.

Also see: Five best works of literature on 9/11, five of the best new 9/11 books and eight worthy 9/11 books.

--Marshal Zeringue