re:mote voices: literature

Title: Heavy Weather
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publisher: Gollancz

Bruce Sterling has a reputation as one of the prime movers in the so-called "cyber punk" scene, for his non-fiction The Hacker Crackdown and his involvement as editor/contributor of the genre defining anthology Mirror Shades. Yet the novel most touted when I explored initially was The Artificial Kid - set in a strange far future, different planet that didn't have the same gritty near-future Gibson had led us to expect from the genre. So it really didn't do much for me, partly due to the style, partly setting. However his short story collection Our Neural Chernobyl turned me on more to his work. While hit and miss at times it still comes recommended as a collection.

Which led me to picking up his Heavy Weather novel when it came out a couple of years ago. Extrapolating from today Sterling gives us an increasingly hostile environment - with an increase in breathing disorders and blips in weather patterns. Alex has one of those disorders and is undertaking treatment in an illegal clinic. Convinced he is being taken for his money and is likely to be killed, his sister breaks in one night and kidnaps him. Which sees him as unwilling inductee to a group of storm chasers. A group led by a master mathematician convinced a hurricane of unprecedented scale is due to hit and that if they can monitor it they can learn to predict its recurrence in future so that they can save lives.

Coming out about the same time as Twister there is a certain common theme. But the big themes here are the characters and how they deal with events and why they deal with them like this. Alex is a strong lead, even as an oxygen junkie who could care less, his introduction to the group allows us to be in a similar position. In addition to the Heavy Weather of the title there is also politics and conspiracy threaded through the plot - making this a much stronger read than The Artificial Kid.

RVWR: PTR
April 2000

Title: Net Spies
Author: Andrew Gauntlett
Publisher: Vision Paperbacks

I'll admit from the start that I picked Net Spies out of a bargain bin, and I paid cash so no one could prove that I did, but then I always pay cash its harder to track. Information can be monitored, and lets face it, is monitored, and with the explosion of the internet there is more traffic than ever. Net Spies looks at the ideas involved in this from the fraud that can be committed to the security issues.

Things like skamming - following a link to a false site which then follows your actions for the rest of your session. Or plug-ins which are actually reconnecting you to a more expensive phone line. Or Back Orifice which infamously enables remote control of your computer. Then there is stalking, spamming and general data abuse.

The other side deals with how secure your email really is, who can read it and why. Privacy and why governments don't like it, but internet business is crippled without it. As always one of the biggest issues with the internet is the differences between the US and Europe. Of particular concern is the Ech/-/elon and Mel/-/with Hill discussion. Ech/-/elon reportedly being an agreement between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for surveillance that stems back to wartime. The big issues are that governments aren't supposed to spy on their own citizens - so they get round this by spying on each other's people. The author includes details of how a politician that tried to investigate this set up conveniently died in a car accident before he could get anywhere.

Net Spies goes from individual issues and legal issues to conspiracy and crime. His range is fairly thorough and his style sufficiently unbiased that we can follow the arguments for ourselves. He also writes from a level which anyone should be able to follow - regardless of technical experience. In the end the author's point is that you should be aware. Whether you have a computer or not, regardless of how secure yours is, companies and services hold information about you in computers and unless they are doing things properly you have no privacy; you have no security.

RVWR: PTR
April 2000

Title: Fools
Author: Pat Cadigan
Publisher:

Reading Cadigan's work one finds she has a style of writing that is very much her own. A fact that comes through in Fools an interesting story of personality and mind. Our central character is somewhat confused - she is either a method actress playing an undercover police officer or a police officer deeply undercover as an actress. Her biggest problem is that both personalities believe that they are the real thing. As the story unfolds it is told from both sides and memories reveal a murder, thefts and criminal racketeering - all of which is of interest to the insidious brain police.

For the most part I've read short stories by Cadigan , much of her more recent work being particularly nice. However it has been said that her ability to hold a full novel together is not the best. And while Fools is her only novel I've read, it does seem to be lacking a certain something. Though Fools does work in some ways with its portrayal of a culture of brain police and mind crime and the monitoring of thoughts. The culmination of Fools being particularly nice, and it is reasonable enough that I have read it twice over the years. From which I've picked up the habit of occasionally quoting "ha and ha" in sarcastic manner along with an admiration for the drug "paranoia" and the salesman's pitch of "are you paranoid enough?"

RVWR: PTR
April 2000