bookshelf

FORMAT C:

Name: FORMAT C:
Author: Edwin Black
ISBN: 1-57129-078-8

by Edwin Black ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1999

bookshelf

Massively conceived, neatly chiseled computer novel that begins on the wrong foot with lists of consumer goods enjoyed by a sybaritic hero only a Honda Del Sol salesman could love. Black (The Transfer Agreement, 1984) soon gets past this sticker-price prose by revealing that Chicago publisher Dan Levin has sold his bundle of magazines to Ben Hinnom, a megabillionaire and multinational media-conglomerate Australian who plans to reorganize all computers on the planet behind his Windgazer 99 multitask operating system. But first he must take over the Zoom operating system, just being introduced and better than his own. But is Windgazer, which will run every chip everywhere, actually a device of . . . well, does 99.9 upside down give you a hint, a touch of Revelation? The plot turns on the Y2K millennium glitch and Windgazer’s lightning ability to fight off all computer failures worldwide, including those in air-traffic control, the financial markets, the credit-card industry, the Internet, etc. When the world taps into the system on the midnight of the millennium, will mankind fall into the devil’s hands—or bring about salvation by typing

Pub Date: May 15, 1999

ISBN: 1-57129-078-8

Page Count: 402

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999

Categories:

SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

bookshelf

Awards & Accolades

Likes

615

Our Verdict

GET IT

New York Times Bestseller

DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

bookshelf

Awards & Accolades

Likes

615

Our Verdict

GET IT

New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.