First up: Worm: The Story of the First Digital World War by Mark Bowden.
The events in the book occurred in 2008-2009, and kick off with the discovery of a new type of worm virus; this is a type of virus that infiltrates your computer completely unnoticed and takes control behind the scenes to send replicas of itself to other unprotected computers on the same network. Some worm viruses spring into action immediately (like sending people spam emails in your name, or DDOS attacks), while others wait for a command from the creator. These 'sleeping' viruses can infect millions of computers at once, and thereby form a so-called botnet, which waits for instructions from the botmaster.
A small number of computer experts in the world has a day job discovering, identifying and destroying viruses and botnets, and identifying the botmaster behind it so they can be arrested. Some are with official organisations, others are singular, benevolent 'white hat' hackers, who view it as a personal challenge or a sport.
The particular worm that this book is concerned with received the moniker Conficker, and was the most sophisticated thing to date. By its rapid multiplication (finally halted at around 8 million computers) Conficker caused concern in all corners, except governmental ones. This forced the normally solitary computer 'geeks' to come out of anonymity and form an elite team - they called themselves the Cabal - to fight the botnet, which had a real capability to generate such a large attack on the internet as a whole that it could be damaged to its core and severely destabilise modern society.
These days, everything is reliant on computers and few understand the breadth and depth of this reliance. Governmental digitalisation, news agency interconnectedness, stock markets, flight schedules, you name it, it's all reliant on the internet and other computer networks. Conficker had even infected the Pentagon, which astonishingly did not seem to alarm the US government over-much: No one seemed able to grasp the far-reaching implications except for the Cabal.
Bowden presents these generally nerdy and antisocial geniuses as a sort of 'X-men', drawing parallels with superheroes in an obvious bid to make them look 'cool'. This is a shame, as the real facts of the story are already so mind-blowingly awesome that it seems a bit unnecessary to use this gimmick.
Interspersed with the main storyline concerning the battle against Conficker - which basically consisted of preventing the botnet from contacting the botmaster and receiving instructions - is the creation and history of the internet and the background stories of the members of the Cabal. This adds some variation to the narrative, and explains techy things that many of us take for granted ("it just works!") but of which we don't know the inner workings. Especially in a time when the actions of hacker-coalition Anonymous are frequently in the news, this is useful knowledge. Sadly, Anonymous itself and its DDOS attacks are not addressed. This would have made the book even more interesting and up to date; I'm hoping for a sequel or an expanded version to increase the timeliness of the book.
But the most mind-blowing about it all is, that there was almost no support from governmental agencies, especially the US government. There is still a shocking lack of knowledge of how the internet works and impacts the lives and safety of citizens, even beyond the cliché of 'Cyber Warfare' from China. The Cabal was ridiculed and forced to rely on the private sector (Microsoft's internet security section played a big role), and the fight was almost over by the time the government got the memo. For the time being, they have stabilised the worm and have it cut off from the botmaster. But everyday the botnet seeks contact and must be circumvented by the Cabal's protocols. The purpose of Conficker is still unknown, but speculation is rife. Another incomprehensible fact is that this has not been in the news anywhere (not in 2008, not now either) except for a small piece on WIRED, I believe. People are not aware of how precarious safety on the internet is, and how it is very like the American Wild West in terms of rules, structure and possibilities. There are people who penetrate the depths of the internet and can basically read and write in binary code: a mere string of incomprehensible 10101101's to the rest of us.
As to the book itself: it is not very long, every chapter starts with a quote from the X-men comic books (either you like it, or you find it corny), and the technicalities are explained in a very accessible way so that anyone with a basic notion of computers and the internet can understand what's going on. I read the e-book version, and sadly it does have a number of typos - especially in the titles and opening quotes. I haven't been able to confirm whether this is the case in the hard copy as well, but it unfortunately lends a cheap air to the book and makes you doubt its factualness and journalistic quality.
Despite this, I have to say I really enjoyed Worm and would recommend it to anyone with a fascination for hackers and the true, hidden heroes of the internet (not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, as it turns out), or who wants to know more about the inner workings of the web.
The Kindle edition is priced (at the time of writing) at £7.43 and I definitely encourage you to get it!
Next up: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
As for the plot: there are definite influences from previous books and films such as Battle Royale. However, I think this extends mostly to the first book, which incidentally is the only one that has as yet been turned into a feature film. The other two instalments add many more layers to the story and change its direction, so that any accusations of 'copy-catting' are rendered obsolete, in my eyes.
As for the film: read the book first! Personally, I'm already in favour of reading a book before seeing the movie, as books tend to have room for much more complexity and sub-plots than films have (unless you're Peter Jackson and you're allowed to turn even one single book into three movies). But especially in this case - as explained in this video - all the complexity that made the book worthwhile is stripped from the script to deliver a simplistic action movie where the heroine must choose between two guys while trying to stay alive in the process, and sleeps in a lot of trees.
There is so much more to the story, and the brutal reality of such a dystopian future and its societal implications are thankfully rarely sugar coated in the way that is annoyingly common in children's/young adult literature. Bit by bit you learn more of the history and cruelty of the country of Panem, which spans the former North-American continent. Additionally, if you read between the lines there is actually some striking social commentary to be found.
The only thing that really annoyed me about this trilogy was the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I felt that the last quarter of Mockingjay was rushed and not fleshed out enough to be a worthy conclusion to the story. The epilogue was also immensely dissatisfying to me, and in my opinion seems to be the simplistic choice of a writer who just wanted to be done with it, finally. This is a great shame, because up till then it felt like great care was taken with the story, only to be devalued by a lacklustre conclusion.
Despite that, I still think this is an eminently readable collection of young adult literature, and much more worthy of your time than the Twilight trilogy; if only for the fact that Katniss stands up and fights for what she believes in, and Bella merely goes catatonic for three months when her boyfriend goes away. Not to mention that Katniss does the rescuing while Bella is the quintessential damsel-in-distress. For someone like me who is all for female empowerment, the choice is easily made.
So there you have it! Finally, the reviews to books that are neither especially hot off the press nor must-read literary classics, but which a large number of my immediate social circle still haven't read. Therefore, I deem the choice of material justified and appropriate. And as always, my opinion is the one we'll be following here.
One of the perks of being the sole author of this blog, you might say.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my treatment of these books and will consider picking them up if you haven't read them yet.
Next blog post will contain an update of my appalling lack of progress in NaNoWriMo so far, and how I fare in my new job - which ironically requires a lot of phone calls (but is still pretty fun), which blog history can testify is my most favourite thing in the world, not.
