The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling, Del Rey/Random House, $24.95, ISBN 0345460618 Reviewed by David Langford
LIKE his friend William Gibson with Pattern Recognition, Bruce Sterling here shifts from science fiction to a cyberthriller of 21st-century technologies. It has the authentic insider buzz of the Wired generation.
Our hero, US cyber-security expert Derek Vandeveer, sees the old world vanish with the 9/11 impacts. Soon after, his dotcom digital wealth vanishes in Enron-style corporate collapse 鈥� but 鈥淰an鈥� has already jumped ship, to one of the new national security agencies spawned by war against terror.
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When a Canadian hacker unsuccessfully probes his latest brainchild, an ultra-secure 鈥淕rendel supercluster鈥� network, Van鈥檚 reaction channels the Patriot Act mood with an intensity that surprises him: 鈥淕ame over! Illegal combatant! Enemy of humanity! Into the razor wire! Guantanamo Bay鈥︹��
Inter-agency power games continue: Van is tempted by the poisoned bait of a spy satellite problem that requires not so much a solution as a fall guy. Though producing an ingenious answer, he lacks the clout to sell it to the military. Just like cyberspace, the US corridors of power are booby-trapped with disconnects between image and reality, shadow and substance. Thus Van accidentally and absurdly becomes a hero among his peers 鈥� 鈥渢he toughest, scariest cyberwarrior in Washington鈥� 鈥� not for software wizardry but for a fit of stubbornness leading to a punch-up. That鈥檚 life.
His real triumph is to integrate hints and clues scattered through the book, and to deduce the well-guarded existence and capabilities of a bizarre yet almost plausible space-war installation. It鈥檚 time for some rough justice.
The Zenith Angle celebrates the computer-geek lifestyle with knowing, deadpan humour, and peeps wittily behind the national security scenes of a modern superpower remarkably similar to America. Great fun, but I fear the reality is more boring.