Like his peers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, bestselling author Bruce Sterling writes cutting-edge speculative fiction firmly rooted in todays reality. Now in The Zenith Angle, he has created a timely thriller about an information-age security expert caught up in Americas escalating war on terror.Infowar. Cybercombat. Digital security and techno-terror. Its how nations and networks secretly battle, now and into the future. And for Derek Van Vandeveer, pioneering computer wizard, a new cyberwarrior career begins on the fateful date of September 11, 2001.Happily married with a new baby, pulling down mind-blowing money as a VP of research and development for a booming Internet company, Van has been living extralarge. Then the devastating attacks on America change everything. And Van must decide if hes willing to use the talents that built his perfect world in order to defend it.Its our networks versus their death cult, says the government operative who recruits Van as the key member of an ultraelite federal computer-security team. In a matter of days, Van has traded his cushy life inside the dot-com bubble for the labyrinthine trenches of the Washington intelligence communitywhere rival agencies must grudgingly abandon decades of distrust and infighting to join forces against chilling new threats. Vans special genius is needed to make the countrys defense systems hacker-proof. And if he makes headway there, hell find himself troubleshooting ultrasecret spy satellites.Americas most powerful and crucial eye in the sky, the KH-13 satellitecapable of detecting terrorist hotbeds worldwide with pinpoint accuracyis perilously close to becoming an orbiting billion-dollar boondoggle, unless Van can debug the glitch thats knocked it out of commission. Little does he suspect that the problem has nothing at all to do with software . . . and that whats really wrong with the KH-13 will force Van to make the unlikely leap from scientist to spy, team up with a ruthlessly resourceful exSpecial Forces commando, and root out an unknown enemy . . . one with access to an undreamed of weapon of untold destructive power.From the Hardcover edition.
