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The Deal Ulterior Motive A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Id's Carmack loves, hates the Mac - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Are Lara Croft and Duke Nukem driving the success of the PC? Talk about the influence of games in Table Talk's Digital Culture area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Ethics of the cross hairs By Andrew Leonard On your computer screen, which is worse -- blasting an alien or shooting a deer? (01/12/99) Joining the mod squad By Todd Levin A gray-market "mod chip" supercharges a Sony PlayStation -- but how does it make you feel? (01/11/99) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg So iMacs have fun new colors. What's so revolutionary about tinted plastic? (01/08/99) On to Mars! By Rebecca Bryant A grass-roots movement burns to put human beings on the Red Planet -- soon (01/07/99) Five fruity flavors By Janelle Brown Happy days are here again, at Macworld (01/06/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST BOOKS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

THE TORTURED SOUL OF THE SILICON VALLEY CEO | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - "Ulterior Motive" is a murder mystery focusing around the software powerhouse Megasoft. When a Megasoft project manager named Jon Goodman stumbles across a grisly murder in a campus parking lot, he is drawn into a tangled conspiracy surrounding the "legendary Megasoft chairman" JackM (who bears an uncanny resemblance to legendary Microsoft chairman BillG). JackM, we learn, is not only a software titan but a presidential candidate who these days also owns VCI cable company (read: TCI) and "CalFirst Bancorp" (read: Bank of America), and has evil plans to take over the world. Our hero JonG, with the help of a buxom Business World reporter, has to solve the mystery, avoid terrorist ambushes and learn a bit about hacking along the way. Neither book is especially great, but neither is horrific either. Both are page-turners, and if you're at all immersed in the world of technology, their nudge-nudge insider looks at Apple and Microsoft might amuse you. Still, the prose in both books is stilted, with stiff dialogue, two-dimensional characters, obvious plot devices and strained passages in which terms like "emoticons" are painfully explained for those readers who are less digitally inclined. In fact, both books read less like literature and more like prospective screenplays -- why else, for example, would Oran write multiple blow-by-blow car chase scenes into his novel? But beyond the writing style, the fantasy technology-business worlds these former geek workers have created also share striking plot similarities. To wit: Lots of gorgeous babes (journalists, public relations executives, models and rock stars) are happy to jump into bed with geeks; Journalists are devious investigators who dig up amazing dirt on big corporate executives by going underground in disguise (In "The Deal," Wired staffers are particularly inventive); Murder, devastating accidents and adultery happen all the time; Microsoft is the evil empire that must be stopped at all costs; and Engineers always save the day. In short, these books make the geek world a hell of a lot more interesting than it really is. And why shouldn't they? The technology industry is somewhat dull -- it's populated primarily with antisocial cubicle slaves and unapproachable CEOs, devoid of much sex and demanding of its workers. Even the scandals are relatively dull: Just try to follow the Microsoft trial and you'll get a taste of the quality of "conspiracy" in Silicon Valley. So while the technology industry may utterly consume the lives of its overworked employees, it still requires a bit of spiffing up to present to a mass audience. Hence Jobs and Gates are given makeovers -- turned into mad, sensitive or benevolent geniuses who connive and scheme behind the scenes -- and the mundane world of boardroom politics is transformed into a life-or-death battlefield. We will, undoubtedly, be seeing a lot more novels like these in the years ahead. There are an awful lot of technology careerists out there with liberal arts backgrounds, perhaps inventing Start buttons or marketing business-to-business applications or pining away as project managers, who in fact would really just like to write. And if you're not going to be the CEO or the charismatic founder, why not try to win fame by writing about them instead? After all, there are hundreds of technology bigwigs who deserve their own inspired thrillers. If Jobs can be a tragic conspiratorial genius, and Gates a murderous politician, why not a novel that sets Larry Ellison up at the center of an international porn ring? A science-fiction thriller that posits Marc Andreessen as an alien masquerading as human in order to brainwash the world? Steve Case could be a serial murderer who picks his victims out of chat rooms! The possibilities, like it or not, are endless. SALON | Jan. 13, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Janelle Brown.