Helpful Score: 1
Good author, not her best work.
A good, although not exceptional, cyberpunk novel. A teenage hacker uses a program he found on his parents' work network to spice up a computer piece he wrote for the "jazz" - a term that's used for the melange of online entertainment, 'spin', satire, gossip & etc. that is enormously popular - and a huge source of revenue - in the near future.
The quality of the piece gets him a commercial deal, and he's teamed up to work with a more experienced programmer - unfortunately, the program he used was confidential, groundbreaking technology, and the owner, a big media mogul, is ready to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. By coincidence, the programmer he just started working with HATES this media mogul, because he also threw the book at her when she was younger, working as a porn star/escort, causing her to spend 2 years in jail for a minor theft. So she is willing to go out of her way, risking her current job, to try to protect this kid.
It's a very well-written, entertaining novel, but the kid isn't really a very exciting protagonist (although the programmer is really cool), and the stakes don't really seem like they're high enough.
The quality of the piece gets him a commercial deal, and he's teamed up to work with a more experienced programmer - unfortunately, the program he used was confidential, groundbreaking technology, and the owner, a big media mogul, is ready to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. By coincidence, the programmer he just started working with HATES this media mogul, because he also threw the book at her when she was younger, working as a porn star/escort, causing her to spend 2 years in jail for a minor theft. So she is willing to go out of her way, risking her current job, to try to protect this kid.
It's a very well-written, entertaining novel, but the kid isn't really a very exciting protagonist (although the programmer is really cool), and the stakes don't really seem like they're high enough.
Not quite cyber-punk, but interesting ideas about where the misinformation age might be headed.
