Fiction 22 Feb 2004 09:56 pm
Hackers
Hackers
Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois (ed.)
This book has nothing to do with the similarly named movie. Thankfully.
What it is, instead, is a collection of short science-fiction stories that talk, loosely, about hackers of various types. There are the regular computer and network hackers; there are underground crackers; there are the “bio-hackers” who work their magic with DNA nucleotydes instead of bits; there are those who only hack in order to prevent others from hacking; and many others.
The collection, edited in 1996, includes stories by well-known names such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan and Neal Stephenson. In all, it features thirteen stories in several different styles, each of them a good read in itself. All together, they make a great book.
My favorite story of the whole set is Bruce Sterling’s “Our Neural Chernobyl”, which was written as if it were a book review which ends up discussing the unintended consequences of a break-through in the field of neurochemistry. And, in doing so, it brings out so many new ideas that one could probably write several books with them. Sterling wrote only a 9-page story, though, and leaves the reader wishing for more.
