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The Zenith Angle
The Zenith Angle
Author: Bruce Sterling
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. Cybercom...  more ». 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.
ISBN-13: 9780345460615
ISBN-10: 0345460618
Publication Date: 4/27/2004
Pages: 320
Rating:
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0 stars, based on 0 rating
Publisher: Del Rey
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
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Top Member Book Reviews

althea avatar reviewed The Zenith Angle on + 774 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I keep wanting to really like Bruce Sterling, but then just - not. The Zenith Angle, is, reportedly, a techno-thriller about computer/Internet security. Sadly, unless you are the Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security to the Bush Administration (who wrote a glowing blurb for this book), Internet Security is just not that thrilling.
In this novel, the main character, Van, leaves his corporate job as a computer geek to go work for the government. He finds himself underpaid and broke, trying to convince people that Internet Security really is important, Meanwhile, his wife is doing well, working as an astronomer on land owned by a chacter whom Ted Turner would not be pleased by. This gets tied in to a malfunctioning spy satellite that Van is asked to fix. Of course, Foreigners are Out To Get Us. Which would be OK, if it was interesting or exciting. Maybe it could have been, in the hands of William Gibson or Neal Stephenson. Here, it's not.
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