The Satori Effect

The novelty of electronic books can wear out quickly -- now that the potential for distributing books as bits is obvious to everyone right up to famous writers and their publishers, it's not enough that a book be electronic. There has to be a good story. Reader 11131719 contributed this review of what sounds like a killer book that satisfies on both counts, and perhaps one well suited to spark some genuine e-book action.

The Satori Effect author David Pesci pages 615 publisher David Pesci www.thesatorieffect.com rating 8.5 reviewer 11131719 ISBN n/a summary Kick-ass Internet murder mystery with a techie hero and one killer app.

One Killer App What the hell is the author of Amistad doing writing a contemporary mystery about hacking, viruses, a computer forensics specialist and the FBI? That was my first thought as I started reading The Satori Effect, the new novel by best-selling author David Pesci. By the time I hit page 20, I could see exactly what he was doing: kicking ass.

Pesci, best known for his novel Amistad (inspiration for the Steven Spielberg movie), steps out of history with The Satori Effect and lands firmly in a future that might be just a few months away. The story, a mystery wrapped around the world of hacking, e-mail viruses and apps, opens with a suicide and quickly moves to a possible homicide: the victim is decapitated when his computer monitor explodes. This turns out to be the second such incident in less than a month. The FBI suspects a Unabomber type, dubbed "The CyberBomber" by the media. A computer forensics tech named Flint, who works in a top-secret government facility, is charged with going through the overwrites on the victims' hard drives in search of clues.

What Flint finds is not the traces of a bomber but pieces of code, one that he comes to believe are part of an app designed specifically to use the system's hardware to kill the user. It's a wild premise, and not even Flint's co-workers believe such an app could be written. But as Flint and his partner (the very hot, seen-it, done-it Special Agent Buhner) begin to investigate, the clues start mounting up. So do the bodies, and it becomes a race to find out who has the app and catch him (or them) before the code is given a replication subroutine and turn it into a full blown Internet virus.

All this is revealed in The Satori Effect's first 120 pages, which are posted online (PDF format) for free at www.thesatorieffect.com. There is also a rich cast of characters, including a dark-hat hacker with a serious information addiction, Flint's boss (who makes Machiavelli look like one of the Backstreet Boys), Flint's co-worker -- a know-it-all wise-ass lesbian tech named Berlow -- and an ever-deepening plot where almost nothing is as it seems on the surface. The writing is first-rate, the details accurate, the story flies and there are more than a few surprises.

My only real hit against The Satori Effect is that it's not available in book form yet. I found out about it after a friend sent me the URL for the book. According to the Matrix-flavored website built around the free pages, Pesci's publishers have hedged on putting this out because he is known as a history writer and they don't think his readers will follow him to technofiction. Pesci, who oozes attitude in the site's copy, has flipped them the bird by posting this online. If readers like the free 120 pages posted on his site for free, the rest is available in PDF format for $10 via PayPal. I quickly found that didn't like reading the book on screen, so I was printing out 100 pages at a time and carrying them around loose, which sucked. Still, I think Pesci's going to get the last laugh on his publishers. The Satori Effect rocks. Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.

Comments

Interesting...

[mholve]

That they've put the first bunches of pages online as a PDF file. If more publishers did this, it would go a long way to help you decide whether or not you like a book - or an author. I wouldn't mind seeing more of this...

Re:Interesting...

[A Big Gnu Thrush]

Hey, you can read the first three chapters of my book at the above sandbox address, or buy the pdf for $10.

Hell, email me and I'll send you the whole thing. I'm a cheap ho.

In the right direction...

[BrK]

This sounds better to me than Stephen Kings idea of digital publishing. There doesn't seem to be the same grief from the author about the same user reading the same story on different platforms. I bought The Plant online just to support the concept in general, but I never really felt that it was all the way there. It would be cool if publishers caught on to this, I would love to be able to read the first few chapters of a book before deciding to buy it.

PDF on a PDA?

[oneiros27]

So if it's being released as a PDF, anyone know of a PDF reader for Palm OS?

The only reason to take the subway into work is so I can sync my palm before I leave, and catch up on the news, etc... it'd be nice if I could download books to it, too, without needing some other piece of hardware to carry with me.

Re:PDF on a PDA?

[Trinition]

RichReader version 1.61 can convert PDFs to their format for reading on the PalmOS. I believe other readers can do this as well, but this is the first that came to mind.

Re:PDF on a PDA?

[Robotech_Master]

I believe that InstallBuddy can convert PDFs, though I haven't personally tried it yet.
--

What will e-books do to us?

[AFCArchvile]

Personally, I prefer to read my books from a non-interlaced, non-pixilated, non-radiation emitting, multi-layered surface which we call paper. Also, what will the e-book revolution do to us? Will banning books be as simple as changing access from r-xr-xr-x to ---------? What about book-burnings? Will we have to go to a Kinko's to print out many hardcopies of books just to get our message across?

IMHO, the closer the e-book gets to reality, the closer our society starts to resemble "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". The government has been lying to us; the final frontier isn't space, it's THEM.

Re:What will e-books do to us?

[BrK]

Wow, I'm paranoid, and that post even makes me think twice.
When I get my eBook I'm going to buy or build a lead cover for it so that it's contents cannot be remotely altered.

Re:What will e-books do to us?

[AFCArchvile]

Well, the gov sure wants us to buy into it.

Re:What will e-books do to us?

[Erik Hollensbe]

One of the things that I've been doing at my job at a online and local-area bookstore in portland (name withheld) is setting up e-book handling for our customers.

We serve 2 types: Rocket Editions, and soon E-books using the MS Reader software (with that cleartype crap the rest of the world calls anti-aliasing).

The MS reader is exactly what you describe - communicate through a secure server that verifies your ID, sends a transaction to a distributor and you get a file (.lit) that contains the "book". You use the software on your computer to read it, and msot sites have it setup so that you can return and download it at will once you've paid for it.

Now, rocket editions, are extrememly cool. You purchase a palm-pilot like device that syncs with your computer, so, you can take it anywhere, not much different than a "real" book. The only caveat is that all books are stored on rocket's site, so, while you've purchased it, you're pretty much at the mercy of their system for getting your books. I can't recall if it's capable of storing these books on your own system.

Now that you perhaps actually understand what you're talkign about, it should be known that too kill off books, you're going to have to kill off:

1) literacy

2) paper

3) ink

4) anything else that sparks creativity

While banning books in libraries does exist, it's important to understand that the libraries get the books for SOMEWHERE, they don't produce them.

How are book burnings any different than banning them? They are both expressions of silencing free speech, even if one tends to be more powerful than the other. A simple protest will do, or mass writing/emailing activism on the complainant's behalf.

It would be particularily nice if people would spend less time performing actions against the problem and more time attempting to solve them.

Reading on the screen

[stephenbooth]

. I quickly found that didn't like reading the book on screen,

I used to have difficulty reading long pieces off the screen. After I really got into fanfic, distributed via mailing lists, I got used to it and now have no problems. It's just a case of getting aclimated.

Now the only time I print something off is to read in bed (still not comfortable curling up with a laptop), to read on the bus or if I need to show it to someone who doesn't have a computer.

Stephen

Re:Reading on the screen

[MikaHaakinen]

I agree reading a book off the screen is not the most romantic way to read a book. Hard copy books keep me reading while the laptop keeps me gaming. It's hard to read online when the option to play is right behind the "pages".

Re:Reading on the screen

[jheinen]

I hated eBooks until I got my iPAQ. Now I would prefer to read all my books that way. The iPAQ's great screen, coupled with MS's "innovative" anti-aliasing technology, makes for a perfectly enjoyable reading experience.

Now if M$ would just fix the damn Reader software so it can handle encrypted stuff from Barnes & Noble (or better yet, is anyone working on cracking M$ Reader's encryption scheme? I pay for my books, but I really want to avoid the hassle of the stupid encryption. If I pay for it, I'll read it where and how I please, thank you).

BTW, Baen has a great sci-fi selection, and they carry eBooks. They are currently giving three away for free. They use a subscription model, so you can pay a small monthly fee and get something like 10 books a month.

-Vercingetorix

Apps that kill users are nothing new

[Anne Marie]

What Flint finds is not the traces of a bomber but pieces of code, one that he comes to believe are part of an app designed specifically to use the system's hardware to kill the user. It's a wild premise, and not even Flint's co-workers believe such an app could be written.

Tell me you haven't ever thought to look at the coronary-heart-disease rates of your average fat bearded sysadmin? Where I work, it may have been the pizza and nachos that pulled the trigger, but it was Unix which cocked the gun.

Have you all lost your minds?

[DaveWood]

Where is the URL?!

Dead trees...

[krb]

I suppose this has nothing to do with the book review, but this thread can only evolve into a discussion regarding online ditribution, so here goes my 2 cents...

I don't think that online book distribution will catch on for reasons far more mundane than finding the right marketing / payment scheme. The fact of the matter is that almost everybody (the reviewer obviously included) hates reading things on a screen and prefers the tactile sensation of a book in their hands. Face it, even the hardest core get sick of man pages after a while and consult whatever paper guide is closest at hand.
People enjoy books for reasons which transcend the content. I have an early edition of the Lord of the Rings which, I feel, adds to the enjoyment of the book. Not b/c it's rare, but because its rough, feels and smells old -- namely, it has character... something your monitor isn't likely to have, ever.

Someday, perhaps, e-books (the hardware) will mature and replace dead tree books -- good, I like the forests -- but not yet. The market isn't there because people don't want to read 1000 pages of text on a monitor. It's just not the same experience...

-k-
krb1@email.com

Re:Dead trees...

[oneiros27]

There's a few benefits of dead trees, as much as I like to keep everything in a digital format --

it has its own sort of built in 'memory'--

If I look at the edge of my old camel book (the new edition I haven't quite beat down this far yet), not only can I see the slight discoloration from thumbing through certain sections more than others, but if I were to put the book on its spine, and let go, I know it's going to pop open to the function reference section.

Whenever I've started a new job, if I'm taking over something from someone who's left and they didn't take the reference books with them, at the very least, I can look through the manuals and see if they've folded down any corners, scribbled in the margins, highlighted a few lines, or stuck in a few post-its to bookmark something. With man pages, I'd have to look through their shell history, and see if I can find out what they found so interesting that it was worth consulting repeatedly.

Now, if they'd start making books from a more renewable material, and not from trees (cotton rag, hemp, even bamboo fibers, as they have a quicker growing time), and as they're now using soy based inks, I'd say that printed manuals and books definately have their benefits, even if you can't just grep for what you're looking for.

Re:Press Enter

[Chelloveck]

Isn't that title of Haldeman's (was it Haldeman?) story?

John Varley, actually, and it was only 16 years ago. Of course, the seminal work in the net-comes-alive genre is Vernor Vinge's 1980 True Names.

DeathRay?

[Ralph Bearpark]

Could this be somehow related to the DeathRay virus hoax?

Regards, Ralph.

Again!

[NMerriam]

Just in case you missed it the first two times:

Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.

Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.


I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.

Paper survives a hd crash

[Y3HarB-y*qOi!(5Q1]

One of the best things you can do for yourself is invest in so good high quality low acid bond and use that to print so long range materials (long range being defined as things you really, really, really want to keep like resumes and code with accompanying line numbers, etc). Stories are no different. Also it's independent of power.

faceless masses

[Chris Pimlott]

Reader 11131719 contributed this review ...

Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...

Re:faceless masses

[Rahoule]

Reader 11131719 contributed this review...
Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...

I was thinking the same thing. >:^) Everyone's complaining about Slashdot's moderation system, stories getting posted too late, Signal11 leaving (well, maybe not that...:^))... Basically they're tearing Rob Malda to shreds over these issues, but they're ignoring the real reason Slashdot sucks these days-- that "User #xxxxx Info" link.

It used to say just "User Info", but Rob doesn't want to bother remember our names anymore. Now, I'm reader #144525. You're reader #16212. Since our comments and traffic are helping Rob and co. stay rich, we're not people -- we're just numbers. If we were citizens of a country, we'd have UPC-style barcodes and machine-readable numbers tattooed on our foreheads at birth.

You'll never get away with this, Taco! I am a person, not a number!!

Prior Art!

[Keith_Beef]

Hey, prior art!

Yes, after reading the Death Ray hoax, and the XFree86 HowTo, I dreamed up the idea of a virus that would

• print something dead small in the centre of the screen so the user puts his head about 1cm from the screen,
• modify the XF86Config file and drive the monitor at such a crazy frequency that it would explode.

I thought about this for so long and so hard, that the idea must be kind of out there in the noossphere now, in the world of objective contents of thoughts...

Then, when your fridge and microwave are on the Internet (IPv6, of course), I've got another one...

• the virus looks in your Outlook diary, to find out when you're going away for three weeks,
• the day before you leave, it order lots of pork and chicken products to be delivered to your place,
• it hacks your fridge, leaving the temperature at 22C for three days, and disables the sensor that smells when food is going bad,
• it starts your Kitchen Wizard, so when you get back it suggests a microwaved dish based on those MIR-Space-Fungus-Infested pork and chicken bits (just to reassure you, Kitchen Wizard tells you to cook at full power in the microwave for thirty minutes!),
• it connects to your microwave, so as to cook at only "defrost" setting for about ten minutes, then it keeps you busy at your computer screen so you don't know what's going on in the kitchen.

And the recipe has so much tobasco and what-have-you, that you'll not know whether it's been cooked to a cinder or if it's still raw. In any case, it's teeming with life, and you've just been killed by a computer virus, poisoned by the Internet....

Oh, won't the future be wonderful with Outlook and IPv6 controlling you groceries...

bunch of whining geeks

[2Bits]

Ok, most people are complaining about reading e-books (or e-text, or whatever you call it). The reasons being the nasty screen, the dumb technology, the lack of book smell, blah blah blah, yada yada yada....

A few thousand years ago, people write books on bamboo slices in China. Then someone invented paper, and then suddenly, everyone write books on paper. And then, guess what, someone complained that books on bamboo are the best, because paper smells bad, it's soft, it's too light, and you don't have the feeling of "having the book on your hand".

Put all books and documents in digital format, I'll buy them in that format. And I'll carry a 50GB HD and have my whole library on it.

Welcome to the future. I'd rather live in the future than in the past.

Re:RIght on!

[AFCArchvile]

"Getting back to point, "Fahrenheit 451" was not about burning books, so much as control of the press and information distribution. Reading was not a crime (as the movie may have suggested), reading certain books were."

That was one of my points. I don't know how you linked "Fahrenheit 451" to the book-burning part (I did separate those two with a two-line gap, didn't I?). I know that F451 wasn't just about burning books; it was about thought control. I see it already; the RIAA, MPAA, and FBI trying to supress "crimethink". I wonder which federal agency will be put in charge with burning all those books, maybe the ATF...

Re:Press Enter: Poor moderation

[The Cunctator]

The above comment was poorly moderated, as the post is mildly sarcastic and genuinely original. Real flamebait would have been, "Ohh, computers that blow up? How original. My mom could kick your mom's ASS!"

Fahrenheit 451

[mattdm]

Actually, if the people in Farhenheit 451 would have had electronic books, the would have been a lot better off. Much easier to hide, and much easier to duplicate.

The point of the story isn't that books-as-paper were banned -- it's about books-as-ideas.

--

$10

[mattdm]

Not to sound like a cheapskate or anything... actually, yes, to sound like a cheapskate: $10 seems like a lot, when a paperback book is $6 or so.

--

Re:Again! (hope he's hungry;) )

[timothy]

I'm leaving my bonus is place on this one so more people can see it, and if it gets modded down, well, that's part of my divine punishment;)

The duplicated sentence was utterly and completely my fault. In the course of editing, I did a copy-and-paste because I'm paranoid about cut-and-paste, and then failed to clean up the original copied item. Repeat: the writer didn't do it, I did.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My apologies to both writer and reader :(

timothy

Re:Reading on the screen (Topic Drift)

[G27 Radio]

It's funny but just today I was reading Programming Python and thinking a web-pad with thumb-buttons to flip pages would be a lot easier than flipping paper. If a fairly cheap device with easy to read fonts was available to do this I doubt I'd being buying as many printed books as I do today. I'd still buy the really good ones in print because they look good on my bookshelves--of course, I'm already two levels deep in books/mags so it would be a space saver as well.

numb