9-11 sparks Sterling's high-adrenaline 'nowpunk' novel
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Millionaire Tom DeFanti, international go-to guy for spy satellite hardware, is not a gullible man. But in the prologue of "The Zenith Angle" (Del Rey, 306 pp., $24.95), he sees convincing evidence that UFOs are "... true and real, just like hammers and hamburgers ... "
An employee visiting DeFanti's mountaintop cabin insists he must be hallucinating, and the millionaire accepts this. Because he sees alien spacecraft, he must be mad. In a different Bruce Sterling novel the UFO would land, and the intelligent insectoids on board would engage DeFanti in devious business deals.
But "The Zenith Angle" is not science fiction. Sterling calls his new genre "nowpunk": fast-paced adventures in computer security, astronomy, particle physics and other areas of science-as-we-know-it. Rather than extrapolating current knowledge into a plausible future, Sterling interprets what's actually going on for the benefit of his readers, technology's end users. So DeFanti meekly steps off stage (for the time being) to begin a course of medication, and the novel's focus switches to Derek "Van" Vandeveer.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Van and his wife, Dottie, wake to the hungry cries of their infant son, Ted. Van makes a huge amount of money working for a telecom research lab in New Jersey; Dottie's an astrophysicist. Their main concern that morning is filling their Victorian mansion with designer lamps and cast magnesium chairs.
Then the towers are hit, and everything changes.
Van's transformation from a "shy, endearing" geek in beard and glasses to a rage-filled, bench-pressing, cyber-spook is sparked by 9-11. It's fanned by two people: Jeb, a sympathetic ex-cop now working for the federal government, and Van's grandfather, former jet designer for Lockheed's top-secret Skunk Works. Jeb recruits Van for the CCIAB, a newly formed task force on national computer security. Grandpa Chuck leaves his state of semi-dementia long enough to give valuable advice for anyone running a clandestine government operation: Listen, decide and believe. Be quick, be quiet, and be on time. Van's father, formerly of the CIA, also makes a cameo appearance as his mild-mannered computer-scientist son answers his country's call.
Van responds to the crisis by marshalling acronym-laden hyper-nerdy computer technologies most readers will find intriguing but unfamiliar. Then, while he's running the hacker-impervious "Grendel distributed supercomputation code" from an undisclosed location, Van is approached by an Air Force Special Operations commando. Will he troubleshoot an ailing spy satellite? Despite being warned off the project by a college friend who works for DeFanti, the satellite's owner, Van goes for it, and the fat is in the fire. What begins as an interesting sideline blossoms into a full-fledged exercise in counter-espionage. Fistfights and beautiful starlets replace flowcharts and equations.
Sterling's delight in nifty gadgets fits right into this "Man From Uncle"-like milieu, and his down-to-earth humor's a welcome relief from most spy novels' grim self-seriousness. Far from coming across as a suave new Napoleon Solo or womanizing James Bond-type, Van is a loving father and faithful husband, a very smart man who's sometimes in over his head but never loses his footing.
Author of a top-selling nonfiction book on computer security, "The Hacker Crackdown," Sterling knows this territory well. He lends expert credibility to his hero's analysis of the futility of installing firewalls in systems without walls. "A far more fertile approach would be a computational immune system," Van muses. Likening predictors of the info-war to "a black flock of the crows of doom," Van unflinchingly confronts doomsayers, UFOs, Beltway bureaucrats and other things that go bump in the night. The flame of his righteous anger burns brightly throughout "Zenith." It's one more star in the dark, post-9-11 sky.
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