[.ca] The Zenith Angle (ISBN 0345468651)

Total trash:
This book was painful to read. It was as though Sterling tried to weave a thin plot around a technical manual, threw in a little politics and left it at that. The premise, while interesting at first, quickly degenerates into a buzzword-fest. Perhaps the author was trying to "out-geek" his sci-fi alumni. I don't even want to pick this book up to give it a proper review. Don't waste your time on this one.

Tepid entertainment...:
Zenith Angle is a ho-hum thriller in the Tom Clancy spy-novel with realistic techonology mould. It's by longtime SF writer Bruce Sterling and it's about the most mild 'thriller' you can imagine, with some of the least believable characters this side of reality TV. At least the book is short, with big type. I don't really want to dump too hard on Sterling: I actually laughed at a few of his amusing turns. But he covers much of the same territory as, say, Crytonomicon, while his main character is completely stereotypical "computer genius". This pretend character, who's technical background is of the Hitchcock "McGuffin" variety, is unlike any real hackers, crackers, or computer programmers you're likely to meet. The fine use of that loveable plot device--the deus ex machina--is on display here. It's all a bit disappointing. I mean: some of Stephenson's recent books had half the plot of this thin marshmallow, but the writing was so brilliant it hurt to put down. By intentionally drawing comparisons with Stephenson, Sterling is just asking to be lambasted, if not roasted over hot coals or forced to edit his next novel on a PDP-11. On the other hand, this is about as intelligent as, say, Da Vinci Code and intended for the same middle-of-the-road non-technical audience. Using his ultra-slick, but apparently content-free Wired magazine credentials, and considering Sterling's not after impressing the grungy 2600 audience with this stuff, I guess he succeeds. I mean, I managed to READ the accursed thing. Nonetheless, this book will be entirely forgotten inside of a month. Buy it in paperback, if you must (although it is too short to be good beach reading). If you like Sterling, buy something else of his, like Islands in the Net and shun this book so he gets back to honest work.

Stay away:
The Zenith Angle opens with an introduction to Tom DeFanti, who is described as "The Most Important Man in the World". DeFanti's personal history is intriguing and, for the first two dozen or so pages, the Zenith Angle appears promising. Then, on page 25, DeFanti loses his mind and virtually disappears from the novel. This episode with DeFanti is a good indicator of where this book is going. Sterling's book is populated with two-dimensional characters he doesn't know what to do with. They act in preposterous, non-linear ways. When they get inconvenient or Sterling doesn't seem to know what to do with them, they disappear. I'd read a couple hundred pages before I finally admitted to myself that the character of Dr. Vanderveer was the key protagonist and I was going to have to live with him for the remainder of the book. As a reader, I found it impossible to empathize with any of the characters in the novel. Everyone's behavior was just too ridiculous. If any of this was an attempt at some form of humor, it was completely lost on me. The book jacket makes an undeserved comparison to Heller's masterful Catch-22 but this novel has none of the intelligence or pathos of Catch-22 and I'm sure Heller would rather have his name left out of this. Yossarian has depth and texture. I missed him after I finished Catch-22 about 20 years ago. Vanderveer is a cardboard cutout that I couldn't wait to say goodbye to. Making matters worse is Sterling's unabashed willingness to write pages and pages of meaningless techno mumbo-jumbo speak that pass for dialog. He throws around acronyms and misuses legitimate technical terms as if he's on some kind of personal mission to prove to technologically savvy readers that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Well congratulations, Bruce, you did it. I'm convinced you don't know what you're talking about. In the future, I'd recommend you write something like, "Van and Rajiv spent the next hour talking about the latest developments in network and systems security," rather than the pages you filled with ridiculous comments about OpenBSD, CodeRed, streams, clusters, astrophysics, and the rest of it. Perhaps I missed some form of irony in the book but I think it was key that your protagonist, Vanderveer, be believable as a technology guru and your dialog made him come across as a doof. What passes for a climax seems to come unwillingly and seems an afterthought. When it does come, it is painful. It is unbelievable. It gets weird, then fizzles. I also want to note that while I found all of the characters ridiculously stereotypical, I thought Sterling's portrayal of Indians crossed a line and was offensive. In one scene, Van offers a network administrator named Rajiv a handshake. Rajiv, instead of taking Van's hand, drops to his knees and fawns over Van's shoes. What's your point, Bruce? In summary, this is a lousy book that is worth skipping. It isn't a masterpiece. It isn't filled with insight. It isn't Catch-22 for the technology generation. It isn't a novel look at the dot-com bust. It's just a bad book filled with silly characters, little or no plot, weak technology ideas, and endless, painful, meaningless techno babble. You want irony? Buy Catch-22 or maybe something by Vonnegut. How about Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five. You want a good sci-fi read? Try Gibson's Pattern Recognition or one of Richard Morgan's excellent and thought-provoking books. You want an interesting discourse on security in a post-911 world? Well, it's a bit high-level, but try Schneider's Beyond Fear. Just stay away from Zenith Angle.

I was completely confused:
This is the worst work of fiction that I have read in the last ten years. I picked it up after reading a short review in Wired. I should have known better. Mr. Sterling writes for Wired and thus _will_ get a good review for his work. The book has Dr. Vandever as a super computer scientist who is famous for his work on 'Grendel' (something like a secure Beowulf cluster.) The whole thing about finding the issue with the Keyhole 13 satellite, controlling a BBJ aircraft from the ground or building a giant ground-based laser to kill super-secret satellites feels so unreal and superflous. There is also this love-affair between Tony Carew and the Indian film actress that was kind of totally unecessary. Mr. Sterling used a lot of scientific works just for the sake of it. This book was a huge waste of my time. Please save your time.

Disappointing - needs an editor.:
I'd second the reviewer who indicated that this is a short story writ long, but even with that proviso, it's pretty thin. I had read _Islands in the Net_ a long time ago, was pretty enthusiastic about _The Difference Engine_ and have followed his uneven columns in Wired, but none of these prepared me for the great silliness in this book. Sterling salts this waste of paper with hitech acronyms and supposed insights from the dot come boom/bust, but it all sounds more like a stream of conciousness whistling around the skeleton of a cheesy plot and bulemic character-development. I kept thinking that the main character was a conceit like the ever-doomed red-jacketed Star Trek security team, to be shortly killed off to lead to some larger point, but he kept surviving, even after voicing some of the least believable mental dialog ever written and transforming in vast and unbelieveable leaps. There are plot twists that defy logic; not always bad, but in this case they are, like wasting several pages describing and rationalizing the process of hauling satellite equipment across country in order to stay in contact via email. This is not even to mention the increasingly unlikely (tho supposedly current) technology that culminates in using spam to power a Goldfinger(?)-like weapon of mass destruction - I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that this was tongue in cheek, except that he'd given no indication that this was one of his tricks. Van, the hero, slightly reminded me of Neal Stephenson's hero in Cryptonomicon, except at 1/1000th strength. The writing style is more like Tom Swift and his Ultrasonic Cycloplane than anything at the level of William Gibson (an ex-co-author (Difference Engine) and inexplicable book-jacket endorser - this is what a true friend will do, I guess), Stephenson, or cohorts. On the other hand, he does give some insights into what may be the inner workings of the gov't post-9.11. And God help us all if they're accurate. In short, the character development is embarrassing, the dialogue is largely unfortunate, the plot is wacky (not in the good sense), and a great deal of the technology description is also of the Tom Swift variety. If this was a movie, it would be described as an unintended comedy. (yeah, I know - this needs an editor too, but what do you expect from a disgruntled reader)