The Zenith Angle [Mass Market Paperback]

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.