The zenith angle

Like his peers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, bestselling author Bruce Sterling writes cutting-edge speculative fiction firmly rooted in today's reality. Now in The Zenith Angle, he has created a timely thriller about an information-age security expert caught up in America's escalating war on terror.Infowar. Cybercombat. Digital security and techno-terror. It's 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 he's willing to use the talents that built his perfect world in order to defend it."It's 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 community--where rival agencies must grudgingly abandon decades of distrust and infighting to join forces against chilling new threats. Van's special genius is needed to make the country's defense systems hacker-proof.