The Zenith Angle - Softcover

Sterling, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345468651 ISBN 13: 9780345468659

Publisher: Del Rey Books, 2005

Synopsis

"Gleeful, shrewd, speculative, cynical, closely observed . . . The Zenith Angle offers wisdom and solace, thrills and laughter."--The Washington Post

"Compelling and important . . . A darkly comic fable of info-war, the black budget, über-geek idealism, and the politics of Homeland Insecurity."--William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition

Pioneering computer wizard Derek "Van" Vandeveer has been living extra-large as a VP for a booming Internet company. But the September 11 attacks on America change everything. Recruited as the key member of an elite federal computer-security team, Van enters the labyrinthine trenches of the Washington intelligence community. His special genius is needed to debug the software glitch in America's most crucial KH-13 satellite, capable of detecting terrorist hotbeds worldwide. But the problem is much deeper. Now Van must make the unlikely leap from scientist to spy, team up with a ruthlessly resourceful ex-Special Forces commando, and root out an unknown enemy--one with access to a weapon of untold destructive power.

"Great fun . . . A cyberthriller of 21st-century technologies [that] peeps wittily behind the national security scenes of a modern superpower."--New Scientist

"A comedic thriller for the homeland security era."--Entertainment Weekly

About this title

Review

The Zenith Angle, futurist Bruce Sterling's first novel since Zeitgeist, tells the story of Derek "Van" Vandeveer. As the story opens, Van sits peacefully at his breakfast table enjoying life as a new homeowner and happily married man, with a new son and a fortune in stock options. Then the morning news reports a jetliner has crashed in nearby Manhattan--colliding with the World Trade Centre. Like many other Americans' lives, Van's will never be the same. He leaves his corporate job to work fighting terrorism for the US government. He soon finds himself sequestered at a top-secret undisclosed location while his fortune vanishes, his former company sinks into a morass of lawsuits and arrests, and his wife and son move to the far side of the country. As Van is transformed from cyber-whiz to spook, he finds himself changing in ways he would never have imagined. --Cynthia Ward, Amazon.com

Review

"A darkly comic fable of info-war, the black budget, über-geek idealism, and the politics of Homeland Insecurity. Sterling's grasp of the surfaces of contemporary reality is deftly prehensile; his understanding of what underlies those surfaces is both compelling and important."--William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition

"Vibrates with fantastic in-jokes and insights . . . Rockets along like a hijacked airliner heading straight at you, like a flash-worm compromising every unpatched Windows box on the net at once. Lots of books are called 'thrillers, ' but very few are this thrilling."--Cory Doctorow, author of Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

"[Sterling offers] great insights about the inner workings of government, private industry, and the threats that could disrupt the online world as we know it. The Zenith Angle mixes technology, politics, dry humor, and suspense to provide a first-rate read."--Howard A. Schmidt, former CSO for Microsoft and former Special Adviser for Cyber Security for the Bush Administration

"A Catch-22 for the slashdot generation: a wry, cynical, informed peek at the paranoid world of the post-9/11 cyberspookerati. Buy it, read it, be very afraid."--Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise

"Perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre."--Time

"Known for putting more interesting ideas on one page than most writers include in an entire novel."--The Seattle Times

"One of America's best-known science-fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre."--Time

"Bitingly satiric--and quite often brilliant."--The New York Observer

"Known for putting more interesting ideas on one page than most writers include in an entire novel."--The Seattle Times

"Nobody knows better than Bruce Sterling how thin the membrane between science fiction and real life has become, a state he correctly depicts as both thrilling and terrifying."--Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century

"The reigning master of near-future political SF."
--Publishers Weekly

"Sterling [has a] gift for creating sympathetic yet fallible characters."--Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0345468651
• ISBN 13: 9780345468659
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 352