Customer Reviews

The Zenith Angle

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

I am a fan of Bruce Sterling, have been on his Viridian list for years and have his blog subscribed. Having said that, _The Zenith Angle_ is a bit of a disappointment. Bruce Sterling can be uneven like this. I absolutely loved _Schismatrix_ and _Holy Fire_; I adore his short stories, particularly _The Bicycle Mechanic_, and the _Globalhead_ ones; _Distraction_ left me in awe and with a vague feeling that I'm missing something not running for office, but the hero being such a wunderkid strained my credibility. On the other hand, _The Difference Engine_ bored me with its improbabilities and made a "style over substance" impression.

Zenith Angle suffers from breaking what I consider the seminal rule of good literature -- that it should not be about exceptional superheroes, but about normal people in exceptional conditions. I find it hard to care for a supergeek who by his technical superpowers comes out of most any hurdle. Similarly, all other characters are painted with a rather broad and very bold stroke. It makes for fast-paced action and some great puns, the book is hard to put down, I must say. But afterward comes the reflection -- what was all that about, really?

The ending is plain bad. In just one chapter all assumptions are turned over, and out of the blue our hero turns into a regular James Bond whereas good guys become villains. It's worse than comic-book-like; I actually caught myself wondering if this is not some sort of elaborate joke on the part of Bruce.

The author's political convictions shine not too subtly throughout the book's pages. Their relevance will be verified in the coming years; but I am afraid that because the book is so engaged in the current discourse, it will age fast, and be forgotten quickly. There are nice touches of Bruce's insight into the human condition in the ever-transforming world that give the book a redeeming value, though.

The prologue starts out with great promise. The writing style is a little clunky, but I figured he was just getting warmed up. Mr. Sterling spends a considerable amount of time building up the first character we meet. Don't get too attached, as he plays almost no part in the remaining 4/5's of the story.

Some novelists are quite adept at building one character or scene per chapter, bringing them all together at some point toward the middle of the story. At first you think that is what is happening in The Zenith Angle, but it's not. It's just a random collection of very loosely related events that don't tie in very well at the end.

If you are at all technical in the computer field, this book will irritate you. Given the various descriptions of the Internet and associated technologies, it's painfully obvious Mr. Sterling has no clue how computers communicate with each other, or how the Internet really works. At one point the main character builds an "entirely secure" OS over the course of a few weeks, with a budget of $100,000.

As laughable as that is, the only reason for this new operating system is to introduce a hacker type who attacks the ultra secure OS. The hacker shows up, attacks the OS and then vanishes from the story. There is no tie-in, no recourse later, and he never shows up again. It's a random short story in the middle of the main story.

And random is the key word for this novel. 30% of the way through, there is no direction to the story. Random characters and situations arise which do nothing to advance, or clarify the story line.

After thrashing around for 200 pages with no plot, Mr. Sterling tries to find some message to leave the reader with. Out of the blue, he attacks Microsoft. This is bizarre, to say the least. He spends a few pages attacking Bill Gates for the amount of money he has, the success of Microsoft, etc. Then he gets on the soap box to tell us how nifty Open Source is. Sadly, there is no tie-in between this and his previous blathering. The overwhelming message you take away from this book is that Mr. Sterling appears to have been on a mission, but you're not even positive of that. He throws out several "messages" for the reader. The book has almost nothing to do with the zenith angle, or terrorism. It's more a microphone for him to air his fairly disjoint thoughts on several loosely connected topics.

As one reviewer pointed out, if you're ADHD, this book is for you. But to maximize your enjoyment, be sure to skip your meds for a few days prior to reading it. The writing style is irritating if you're able to hold a coherent thought for more than a second or two. Consider reading 300 pages of "Van opened the door. Van closed the door. Van inserted the key. Van started the engine. The engine was loud. Van doesn't like Microsoft because it's the evil empire. Van put the car in gear. The car started moving. "

All in all, The Zenith Angle sounded like a good read but was a major disappointment. Save your money.

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.

It's tough for me to give Bruce Sterling a bad review because reading his Schismatrix so many years ago was such a wonderful and mind-blowing experience. The novel schismatrix is a little dated now, but it heralded a wave of exciting new sci-fi that explored today's developing technologies and extrapolated exciting new technologies that could not have been imagined in the golden age of sci-fi.

But, nostalgia aside, this is just an OK book. A little paranoid, a little dismal, and a lot pessimistic. Typical Sterling actually, but the thrum of new ideas, the exploration of new possibilities is lacking in this one, perhaps because it is confined to the near present. My advice is to skip this one and read Schismatrix or his Islands in the Net (another favorite of mine) first.

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.

This is an awful book.

Was there a ghost writer involved? Did Sterling turn his name into a brand, much like Tom Clancy? I really hope so. This is a worse read, than even the dreary NetForce books from brand Clancy. (And that is saying something).

Awful storyline, awful characters, awful grasp of technology, awful love affair.

Bruce what happened?

Bruce Sterling was my favorite writer in all the world. I've read every novel Bruce has ever written. I've loved his great characters, great stories and great technology. His writing has gotten continually better throughout the years. But shockingly, all the progress he's made has now been lost. One won't find even a hint of Sterling's former greatness in Zenith Angle. And from looking at other reviews here, I'm not alone in this opinion.

I've recommended Bruce's books to most of my friends and will continue to recommend his great works like Distraction. In fact, Bruce is one of the only authors I was still buying in hardcover. This will be the last hardcover I buy of Bruce's for a long while.

I wonder what Bruce was thinking when he wrote this? I can only guess he woke up the morning after September 11th in a patriotic rage. Because this book is clearly Bruce's attempt to do some Tom Clancy. Unfortunately, it's the worst Clancy-esque work I have ever read. Clancy knows how to do his thing. Clancy knows the motivations behind his jingoistic, militaristic, overtly patriotic characters. But it's clear Sterling doesn't understand the mentality of these people at all. As the fundamental failure of Zenith Angle is that Sterling tries to shoe-horn an uber patriot Clancy-protagonist into a computer nerd. The results are simply dreadful.

And it's not just that the characters are poorly developed and flat, there's not a sympathetic person in the book. In the finale, the protagonist performs actions so far out of character and so disgraceful to make one wonder if another person has occupied his body. The plot? What there is of it isn't at all interesting. There is no hook, and the "high-technology" described was dated before the book hit the press. This is just a post 9/11 diatribe with a lot of ra, ra patriotism.

Zenith Angle is actually so bad, had it not been written by Sterling I wouldn't have even finished it. As I turned every page, I continually wondered if someone else had written this. In all seriousness, I suggest Bruce bury this thing and not even let the publisher release it to paper back. If I were him, I'd be truly embarrassed over this.

Do yourself a favor, if you haven't read Sterling's Distraction or Heavy Weather, read those, they're really great books. But even if you receive a copy for free, Zenith Angle isn't worth your time. In fact Zenith Angle is the worst book I have read in the past 5 years. And believe me, I never thought I would be saying that about a work penned by Bruce Sterling, my (no longer) favorite author.

Overall, this was a disappointment. Either you like Sterling's prose or you don't. I happen to like it but this book is less than a novel that what seems like a long treatment for a novel. Plot points come and turn on a dime with little involvement of characters or even explaination. Bits and pieces sparkle with Sterling's take on things but these flashes are far and few in between. You really don't care that much about any of the characters and when the main protagonist goes through huge, mostly unexplained behavior shifts, you really don't care. I only kept reading it to the end just to see if Sterling would put him and the reader out of their misery. I think I'm going to have to re-read "islands in the net" to wash the bad taste of this one out of my mouth.

Is it me, or is the genre of "techno-thrillers" requires writing books that are insulting to the intelligence of readers?

The technological background is so ridiculous that I lost count of all idiotic devices and "explanations" offered by the author. Obviously, the esteemed cyber-author doesn't have a slightest clue about the technology he's writing about. Just a bunch of buzzwords mixed in a seemingly random manner, making no sense whatsoever.

Similarly ridiculous is his grasp of politics; the characters are either tired cliches or simply unbelievable. So pathetic... Geniuses capable of implementing operating systems from scratch in just few months (hint: nobody _types_ that fast), generals which make their decisions based on mother's stock portfolio performances, psycho ex secret-ops agents which happen to carry loads of secret satellite documents, mad-cow disease afflicted billionaires; I'd say a bunch of aliens from Mars is more realistic than this cast.

The only thing which kept me reading was the curiosity: I was looking forward to see what kinds of techno-inanities the author was capable of coming up with. I wasn't disappointed: the idea of a doomsday device which fries satellites with filtered-out e-mail spam was the crowning achievement of the author's utter illiteracy in all matters technological. Of course, the doomsday device burns with tons of sparks in the end, making the novel eminently attractive to the Hollywood hacks.

It even has black helicopters in it. Junk.