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On the trail of a superhacker

By DAVE GUSSOW
Published September 18, 2005

MEET THE AUTHOR

Marc Giller will appear at the Times Festival of Reading on Oct. 29 at USF St. Petersburg.

HAMMERJACK

By Marc D. Giller

Bantam Dell, $12, 355 pp

The future is beginning to look familiar, at least in works of science fiction.

Powerful technology that knows all. Check. A mysterious and all-powerful ruling class. Check. A dark society of drug-addled street people. Check. Law enforcement imposed to keep order. Check. An underground resistance. Check.

Yet Marc Giller of Tampa makes all this work in his first sci-fi novel, Hammerjack, with an intriguing and well-told story and a vision of future tech that doesn't seem all that far-fetched. And if you are interested in more, Giller even includes the beginning of the second in this series, due out next year.

According to Giller, a hammerjack is a superhacker for hire, a mercenary out to steal information from the Axis, the evolution of today's Internet, only more powerful. The Collective is made up of the big businesses that control the world. On the other side is the Inru, an antitech underground.

The main character is Cray Alden, once a hammerjack but now working for the Collective. He's initially chasing a runner who stole data from a supercomputer. Though the background of the book may be similar to other science fiction works, the plot takes twists and turns that keep you riveted. It goes from a simple data theft to something more mysterious and ominous: the rumor of a supercomputer so powerful that it could allow machines to rule and endanger the human race.

Along the way, Alden deals with a cast of characters that leave you wondering who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Alden works for Phao Yin, a corporate executive with strange and deadly habits. And there's a legendary hammerjack known as Heretic working for the Inru.

In an interesting move for a high-tech thriller, two of the main characters are women: Avalon, an enforcer with incredible strength and skills; and Lea Prism, who appears first as a hooker but turns out to be someone far different. Even the name of the mysterious supercomputer - Lyssa - sounds feminine.

As for plowing familiar territory, Avalon reminded me of Grace Jones' character in the James Bond flick A View to a Kill, though without the high-tech touches. The machines taking on human qualities brought back the first Star Trek movie with Vger. And the dark society could be from any number of sources, though I imagined Blade Runner as the setting.

I also wondered if Giller was subtly playing mind games with names. Could Cray be in honor of Seymour Cray and his work with supercomputers? Is Inru an anagram for ruin?

If Hammerjack is to be faulted, it's for lack of character development - although the book delivers such fast-paced and vivid sequences, what usually would be a bigger quibble is easily overlooked. We follow Alden because he's at the center of the action, but we don't know much about him. Despite early references to his days as a hammerjack, it isn't until deep into the book that we learn some of why and how he earned his reputation and how he ended up working for the Collective.

Even geeks deserve some personality.

-- Dave Gussow is the Times personal technology writer.

[Last modified September 17, 2005, 09:01:03]