This article is about the Eric Nylund novel, for the graphic novel Signal to Noise, see Signal to Noise (comics).

Signal to Noise is a 1998 cyberpunk

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...

 novel by Eric S. Nylund

Eric S. Nylund

Eric S. Nylund is an American novelist and professional technical writer. His wife, Syne Mitchell, is also a science fiction writer. He holds a B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an M.Sc. in chemical physics from the University of California, San Diego...

. It is the first half of a duology, the second half being A Signal Shattered

A Signal Shattered

A Signal Shattered is a 1999 cyberpunk novel written by Eric Nylund. It is the second half of the story began in Signal to Noise and concludes the story of Jack Potter. This novel contains many of the same themes, imagery, and technology as its prequel....

.

Plot summary

The novel follows Jack Potter, a computer cryptographer

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

 tenured at the fictional Academe of Pure and Applied Sciences in Santa Sierra, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 (a city assembled from the ruins of San Francisco

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

.) The story details Jack's first encounter with an alien

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 calling himself Wheeler who apparently wishes to trade information with humanity.

Accompanied (for a while) by "gene witch" Zero al Qaseem and data paleontologist

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 Isabel Mirabeau, Jack establishes a corporation based around one of the technologies he was traded by Wheeler, but soon finds that there may be more to his dealings with the alien than he bargained for. Traitorous alliances, deceitful propaganda, and shady business practices are frequent elements of the novel.

Bubbles

One of the interesting pieces of technology utilized throughout the novel is the idea of bubbles. A bubble is a self-contained holographic

Holography

Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that when an imaging system is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even when the object is no longer present...

 chamber that a person may interface with and, if augmented with the proper neural equipment

Brain implant

Brain implants, often referred to as neural implants, are technological devices that connect directly to a biological subject's brain - usually placed on the surface of the brain, or attached to the brain's cortex...

, use to connect to a network resembling an extremely advanced World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. Using a bubble's interface, a person can manipulate a super-immersive graphical simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

, drawing on their thoughts and subconscious hunches to create metaphorical

Conceptual metaphor

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...

 situations which aid greatly in communication with others. However, unlike similar holographic technology (such as Star Trek

Star Trek

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

's holodeck

Holodeck

A holodeck, in the fictional Star Trek universe, is a simulated reality facility located on starships and starbases. The first use of a "holodeck" by that name in the Star Trek universe was in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint", although a conceptually...

), there is no A.I.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 to be seen; all avatars

Avatar (virtual reality)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

inside the bubble's simulation are either users or metaphors created by users.