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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk 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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Like his peers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, bestselling author Bruce Sterling writes cutting-edge speculative fiction firmly rooted in today’s reality. Now in The Zenith Angle, he has created a timely thriller about an information-age security expert caught up in America’s escalating war on terror.
Infowar. Cybercombat. Digital security and techno-terror. It’s how nations and networks secretly battle, now and into the future. And for Derek “Van” Vandeveer, pioneering computer wizard, a new cyberwarrior career begins on the fateful date of September 11, 2001.
Happily married with a new baby, pulling down mind-blowing money as a VP of research and development for a booming Internet company, Van has been living extralarge. Then the devastating attacks on America change everything. And Van must decide if he’s willing to use the talents that built his perfect world in order to defend it.
“It’s our networks versus their death cult,” says the government operative who recruits Van as the key member of an ultraelite federal computer-security team. In a matter of days, Van has traded his cushy life inside the dot-com bubble for the labyrinthine trenches of the Washington intelligence community—where rival agencies must grudgingly abandon decades of distrust and infighting to join forces against chilling new threats. Van’s special genius is needed to make the country’s defense systems hacker-proof. And if he makes headway there, he’ll find himself troubleshooting ultrasecret spy satellites.
America’s most powerful and crucial “eye in the sky,” the KH-13 satellite—capable of detecting terrorist hotbeds worldwide with pinpoint accuracy—is perilously close to becoming an orbiting billion-dollar boondoggle, unless Van can debug the glitch that’s knocked it out of commission. Little does he suspect that the problem has nothing at all to do with software . . . and that what’s really wrong with the KH-13 will force Van to 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 an undreamed of weapon of untold destructive power.
From the Hardcover edition.
Infowar. Cybercombat. Digital security and techno-terror. It’s how nations and networks secretly battle, now and into the future. And for Derek “Van” Vandeveer, pioneering computer wizard, a new cyberwarrior career begins on the fateful date of September 11, 2001.
Happily married with a new baby, pulling down mind-blowing money as a VP of research and development for a booming Internet company, Van has been living extralarge. Then the devastating attacks on America change everything. And Van must decide if he’s willing to use the talents that built his perfect world in order to defend it.
“It’s our networks versus their death cult,” says the government operative who recruits Van as the key member of an ultraelite federal computer-security team. In a matter of days, Van has traded his cushy life inside the dot-com bubble for the labyrinthine trenches of the Washington intelligence community—where rival agencies must grudgingly abandon decades of distrust and infighting to join forces against chilling new threats. Van’s special genius is needed to make the country’s defense systems hacker-proof. And if he makes headway there, he’ll find himself troubleshooting ultrasecret spy satellites.
America’s most powerful and crucial “eye in the sky,” the KH-13 satellite—capable of detecting terrorist hotbeds worldwide with pinpoint accuracy—is perilously close to becoming an orbiting billion-dollar boondoggle, unless Van can debug the glitch that’s knocked it out of commission. Little does he suspect that the problem has nothing at all to do with software . . . and that what’s really wrong with the KH-13 will force Van to 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 an undreamed of weapon of untold destructive power.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I've struggled to describe why I don't like this book, and the best way I can describe it is to say that this book is like "Stephen King meets sci-fi." The writing is weak, and the characters are shallow. What I found particularly grating was the definite shift from the author's previous works with their vaguely counterculture characters to the straightlaced, flag salutin' ones of Zenith Angle. Here we have a "geek" who basically drops all his interest in cool technologies to become a fed, because by golly, it's the right thing to do. Hello, Tom Clancy.
If it had contained more humour, or been somewhat worse, I would have called it failed satire. As it is, it's simply an ordeal to read. It should have been released straight to pulp paperback with a cover showing the main character holding a baby with a rippling American flag in the background.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I was very disapppointed by this book - as a bit of a geek myself, I figured I was right in the target audience for this tale of geek heroics, but frankly it never really took off and towards the end just collapsed completely with all sorts of crap about turning spam emails into lasers and the like. I guess that was meant to be funny, but it was really just dumb.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Zenith Angle was perhaps cursed by being marketed as a post 911 novel when, typically, Sterling had already written the best of all post 911 novels, Zeitegeist *before* 911. Zenith Angle is a curiously unresolved book, neither thriller nor satire - if it was cinema you'd suspect that the director, studio, and writers had all been trying to make very different films. If you haven't read Sterling - perhaps the best living SF author - before start with Schismatrix (avantegarde punk space opera) or Zeitegeist (politics and deconstructionism) or Distraction (truly literary SF)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Geek humour and 7/11 do not mix...
This is a disappointing book. The author has always had the knack of channeling the future and this power does not desert him here. Set in the fall out of the dot. Read more
Published 10 months ago by A. J. Poulter
Great fun....
This Sterling novel is great fun to read.
After reading Zeitgeist, Holy Fire, Heavy Weather and Visionary in Residence, I'd lost interest in Sterling. Read more
After reading Zeitgeist, Holy Fire, Heavy Weather and Visionary in Residence, I'd lost interest in Sterling. Read more
Published 12 months ago by N
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