FILM TECHNOLOGY
Although format c: is billed as a millennium thriller, it's more - and less - than that. On one level it plays on the fear that once a Bill Gates-like evildoer loads his operating system onto every computing device in the world, he'll rule the planet. On another level there's a whole Satan-enslaving-humanity motif. Author Edwin Black doesn't pull off either of these conceits, but he does manage to weave them into an interesting novel.
Unfortunately for readers, the book's weakest point is at its start, where Black struggles, with limited success, to explain acronyms like API and NDA. Characters seem to live in a cardboard reality, and his forays into Judaica and the Holocaust are unconvincing. But the battle of good versus evil is what's intriguing here, and, with the main characters' unnatural predilection for driving around in a Honda Del Sol and punching numbers into a super evil PDA, the story comes through.
format c: by Edwin Black: $24.95. Brookline Books: (800) 462 6420, www.featuregroup.com/formatc.
STREET CRED
Basement Area Network
Hacking the Vacuum Tube
Free of Attachments
Polaroid's Sticky Portal
Burnt Rubber, Chicago Style
Booting Up Beelzebub
Out of the Celluloid Closet
ReadMe
Music
Saar-Sighted
The Transreal Thing
I, Nicklaus
American History f/x
Just Outta Beta
Little Big Screen
"It Was Just the Law of Large Numbers at Work"
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