The Shockwave Rider
Encyclopedia
The Shockwave Rider is a science fiction
novel by John Brunner
, originally published in 1975. It is notable for its hero's use of computer hacking skills to escape pursuit in a dystopia
n future
, and for the coining of the word "worm
" to describe a program that propagates itself through a computer network
. It also introduces the concept of a Delphi pool, perhaps derived from the RAND
Corporations' Delphi method
- a futures market on world events which bears close resemblance to DARPA's controversial and cancelled Policy Analysis Market
.
by Alvin Toffler
. The hero is a survivor in a hypothetical world of quickly changing identities, fashions and lifestyles, where individuals are still controlled and oppressed by a powerful and secretive state apparatus. His highly developed computer skills enable him to use any public telephone to punch in a new identity, thus reinventing himself, within hours. As a fugitive, he must do this from time to time in order to escape capture. The title is also a metaphor for survival in an uncertain world.
by Alvin Toffler
, the novel shows a dystopia
n early 21st century America dominated by computer networks, and is considered by some critics to be an early ancestor of the "cyberpunk
" genre. The hero, Nick Haflinger, is a runaway from Tarnover, a government program intended to find, educate and indoctrinate highly gifted children to further the interests of the state in a future where quantitative analysis backed by the tacit threat of coercion has replaced overt military and economic power as the deciding factor in international competition. In parallel with this, the government has become a de facto oligarchy
whose beneficiaries are members of organized crime
.
Nick's talent extends to programming the network using only a touch tone
telephone. One of his handlers at Tarnover explains that this is like a classical pianist being able to play entire sonata
s and concerto
s from memory. However Nick also has some personality flaws, amounting almost to a deathwish. These become manifest in exhibitions of his abilities, revealing his identity to his pursuers.
The background to the story includes a massive earthquake laying waste to the San Francisco Bay area
in California
. Millions die and millions more are left to live on government handouts. The subsequent economic depression, coupled with the rootlessness enabled by access to online data and strong social pressure to be flexible (the results of corporations wanting highly mobile workforces without strong local ties), results in a fragmentation of society along religious, ethnic and a variety of class markers, what Toffler calls "subcults", including what would in 2010 be described as "gangs." The equitable distribution of data access and data privacy is a prominent theme in the book; characters who have access to information which is nominally secret enjoy demonstrable economic advantages over others lacking access to such data. In the novel, data privacy
is reserved for corporate entities and individuals who may then conceal wrongdoing; by contrast, normal citizens do not enjoy significant privacy.
The world described in the book is dystopian, with laissez-faire
economics portrayed as leading inevitably to disaster as greed trumps long-term planning. The educational system is dysfunctional, with teachers unable to perform their jobs due to strictures. The only 'functional' educational system seen in the book is portrayed as an enclave, the tightly-controlled Tarnover school. Communities are either walled enclaves of privilege or largely lawless areas entirely lacking protection from corrupt civil authorities. Infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, and characters who reside within 'paid avoidance zones' receive compensation from the government in lieu of actual services.
Although he initially felt at home at Tarnover, Nick eventually becomes aware of experiments in genetic engineering
being performed there. These produce monstrous deformed children who are disposed of when they are no longer needed for study. At this point Nick becomes determined to escape. He studies data processing, steals a personal ID code intended for privileged individuals who wish to live their lives without surveillance, and goes on the run. He uses the stolen computer access code to cover his data trails and create new identities for himself, easily adopting entire new personas. One is the pastor of a popular church, another is an idle playboy gigolo
.
In this last role, calling himself Sandy Locke, he becomes the lover of Ina Grierson, a top executive at Ground to Space Industries, a powerful "hypercorp" known to all as G2S. Intending to use the computer facilities at G2S to ensure that his code is still valid after the six years he has been away, he signs on as a "systems rationalizer" with the company. This brings him into contact with Ina's daughter, Kate, who attracts him despite her plain appearance and simple lifestyle. At the age of 22, Nick's age when he left Tarnover, Kate is a perpetual student
at "UMKC
". She is perceptive enough to penetrate Nick's adopted persona, deeply disturbing him even though she fascinates him. He visits her at home, helping her to clean out some of her possessions, and meeting her tame cougar, Bagheera. Bagheera is the product of her late father's genetic research into intelligence. He died shortly after abandoning the research because the government was using it to produce animals for military uses.
The 21st-century lifestyle produces a symptom called "overload" in many people, and most, including Nick, take tranquilizers to some degree. However Nick collapses completely when told that a representative from Tarnover is coming to meet him at G2S. He returns to Kate and confesses that he is not what he seems, asking for her help. She conducts him to one of the "paid avoidance areas" in California, where people are paid to do without the full panoply of modern technology, as an alternative to spending billions to rebuild infrastructure after the earthquake. After Nick risks exposure yet again in one of these places, they move to the least known one, a town called Precipice.
Precipice turns out to be a Utopian community of a few thousand people. The nearest comparison would be an agrarian, cottage industry community designed by William Morris
. Precipice is also the home of "Hearing Aid", an anonymous telephone confession service accessible to anyone in the country. Hearing Aid is also known as the "Ten Nines", after the phone number used to call it: 999-999-9999. People call the service and simply talk. Some rant, others seek sympathy, still others commit suicide while on the phone. Hearing Aid's promise is that nobody else, not even the government, will hear the call. The only response Hearing Aid gives to a caller is "Only I heard that, I hope it helped."
Nick and Kate settle into the community. The inhabitants include intelligent dogs that escaped from the projects that Kate's father worked on. These act as companions, guards, nannies, and even lie detectors, using their sense of smell. Nick rewrites the "computer tapeworm" that prevents the calls to Hearing Aid being monitored. While at G2S he became aware of massive backups of data being performed, clearly in anticipation of a major network outage. The Hearing Aid worm is designed to scramble network traffic if attacked, but Nick realizes that it could be destroyed if the authorities were prepared for the effects and ready to recover from them. His new worm, which he calls a "phage", cannot be removed without dismantling the entire network.
Possibly encouraged by the government, local gangs and tribes raid Precipice, burning down Nick and Kate's house before being overwhelmed by the dogs. Nick, suffering another overload, blames Kate for the incident, since she, following Hearing Aid policy, cut off a call from someone attempting to warn Precipice. He hits her, and then, filled with remorse, leaves the town. He finally reveals his location to the authorities when, encountering one of the "Roman circus" operations which broadcast live fights and other bloody exhibitions to the country, he responds to an "all comers" challenge by the father of the leader of one of the gangs, and cripples him in front of a nationwide audience.
At Tarnover, Paul Freeman takes charge of the interrogation. He was the representative whom Nick, as Sandy Locke, was supposed to meet at G2S. Freeman, a tall gaunt African-American, gradually comes to realize that he has more sympathy with Nick's views than his employer's, and eventually absconds himself, giving Nick computer access so that Nick can make his own escape. The precipitating event in this case is Kate's abduction by government agents, who bring her to Tarnover for further questioning and to threaten Nick.
With the code he gets from Freeman, he sets up an identity as an Army Major, with Kate as his prisoner. Once clear of Tarnover, they disappear together. This time around, Nick has another plan, and rather than running and hiding, he and Kate spend a number of months traveling the country, aided by an "invisible college'" of academics who are allies or former residents of Precipice. He creates a new "worm" which is designed to destroy all secrecy. (Brunner invented the term "worm" for this program, as a self-replicating program that propagates across a computer network - the term "worm
" was later adopted by computer researchers as the name for this type of program.)
The worm is eventually activated, and the details of all the government's dark secrets (clandestine genetic experimentation that produces crippled children, bribes and kickbacks from corporations, concealed crimes of high public officials) now become accessible from anywhere on the network - in fact, those most affected by a particular crime of a government official are emailed the full details. In place of the old system, Nick has designed the worm to enforce a kind of utilitarian socialism, with people's worth being defined by their roles in society, not their connections in high places. In effect, the network becomes the entire government and financial system, policing income for illegal money, freezing the accounts of criminals, while making sure money (or credit) flows to places where people are in need. This will only happen fully if the results of a plebiscite, again conducted over the network, allow it.
In a final atavistic attempt at revenge, the government orders a nuclear strike
by a single aircraft from a local Air Force base. Warned by Hearing Aid, Nick is able to penetrate the military computers and manufacture a counter-order to stop the plane just before it reaches the town. The book ends optimistically, with there being no more privileged hiding of information, no more secret conspiracies of the rich and powerful.
Kate Lilleberg is the daughter of a high-powered executive mother and a genius scientist father. She seems content to be a perpetual student, however, until she meets Nick, seeing in him a real person under the false persona. Unlike her friends, she is capable of deep commitment, as exemplified by her fulfilling her promise to her dead father, and caring for the cougar, Bagheera, bred by her father for his researches. Her chosen life has one feature her mother cannot appreciate: it allows her to remain in one place.
Paul T. Freeman has spent his 39 years studying, learning, and believing in the objectives of Tarnover and Electric Skillet. Nick's plan is to lead him to areas where his high intelligence will question his perceptions and beliefs, resulting in the inevitable turning away from the power elite he serves.
Ralph C. Hartz is the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Data Processing, and the man to whom Paul Freeman reports his progress on interrogating Nick. However he himself serves entrenched interests in Washington D.C. When Nick, with Paul's help, escapes with even more powerful codes than before, he is ruthlessly cast aside, not least because his superiors refuse to accept that the new codes must be disabled so soon after replacing the old ones.
Ina Grierson, Kate's mother, lives in world of personal power but is as prone to paranoia as the lowest of her underlings. Good looking at the age of forty-something, she clings to her youthfulness, partly by taking younger lovers. The stress of living in a connected world is partly defused by luxury vacations, on one of which she meets "Sandy Locke". Later, after Kate is abducted she is jolted out of her complacency, and with the aid of software written by "Sandy" she is able to penetrate the government smokescreen.
gave the novel a mixed review, saying that while "the book reads well . . ., [i]ndividual sections are often brilliant, [and] the message is incisive and timely," that "as a story it limps" and that many characters, including the main antagonists, "are cut from cardboard." New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas was even more critical, saying that while Brunner was attempting to write "slice-of-life" fiction about a future society, the result of his arbitrary choices about social details is that "the entire fictional edifice collapses like a house of cards."
and the overthrow of the Chilean President Salvador Allende
. Both are referenced in the novel as examples, in Nixon's case, of a failed attempt by organized crime
to suborn the Presidency, and in the second, of the consequences of working against multinational commercial interests.
Most of the characters live with the feeling that their lives could be turned upside down in an instant because of someone breaking into the data held on the network. They also believe that the network knows more about them than they do about themselves. This is an extension of the sense of paranoia felt by many people in the 1970s, believing themselves to be powerless in the face of political and economic forces over which they had no control.
Perception is a recurrent theme in the novel. In particular, Brunner is concerned with perceptual patterns and how they can both help and mislead. Nick projects patterns of behavior to assume his personas, but Kate has "natural wisdom" which means that she ignores surface patterns to perceive the truth beneath. When they arrive in Precipice, the couple have to abandon their normal "urban pattern" to see the ways in which the town's unique design merges public and private space, along with natural and artificial structures.
The theme of patterns in perception runs through the entire novel. Future shock arises when reality and change disrupt patterns. People respond by falling into strong patterns within human nature, particularly tribalism.
Others try to convince themselves that all change is good, adopting the "plug in" lifestyle where they feel able to relocate to another city and insert themselves into a new social niche with a minimum of inconvenience. Their mobility is, however, a reflection of the failure of the lifestyle to satisfy them, resulting in more moves.
In this world of confusion, there are also companies specializing in psychological intervention. One such is "Anti-Trauma Inc." who are hired to "normalize" children, although what they do is more akin to "deprogramming
", as performed on children retrieved from cults
. They do significant harm to their charges, although as so often happens in Brunner's interconnected society, they also spend much money and time covering up their failures.
16, 1978
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel by John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
, originally published in 1975. It is notable for its hero's use of computer hacking skills to escape pursuit in a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n future
Future
The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come...
, and for the coining of the word "worm
Computer worm
A computer worm is a self-replicating malware computer program, which uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other nodes and it may do so without any user intervention. This is due to security shortcomings on the target computer. Unlike a computer virus, it does not need to attach...
" to describe a program that propagates itself through a computer network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
. It also introduces the concept of a Delphi pool, perhaps derived from the RAND
RAND
RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...
Corporations' Delphi method
Delphi method
The Delphi method is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.In the standard version, the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds...
- a futures market on world events which bears close resemblance to DARPA's controversial and cancelled Policy Analysis Market
Policy Analysis Market
The Policy Analysis Market , part of the FutureMAP project, was a proposed futures exchange developed by the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and based on an idea first proposed by Net Exchange, a San Diego research firm specializing in the development of online prediction...
.
Origin of the title
The title derives from the futurological work Future ShockFuture Shock
Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of...
by Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity....
. The hero is a survivor in a hypothetical world of quickly changing identities, fashions and lifestyles, where individuals are still controlled and oppressed by a powerful and secretive state apparatus. His highly developed computer skills enable him to use any public telephone to punch in a new identity, thus reinventing himself, within hours. As a fugitive, he must do this from time to time in order to escape capture. The title is also a metaphor for survival in an uncertain world.
Plot introduction
Based on the ideas in the book Future ShockFuture Shock
Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of...
by Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity....
, the novel shows a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n early 21st century America dominated by computer networks, and is considered by some critics to be an early ancestor of the "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...
" genre. The hero, Nick Haflinger, is a runaway from Tarnover, a government program intended to find, educate and indoctrinate highly gifted children to further the interests of the state in a future where quantitative analysis backed by the tacit threat of coercion has replaced overt military and economic power as the deciding factor in international competition. In parallel with this, the government has become a de facto oligarchy
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
whose beneficiaries are members of organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
.
Nick's talent extends to programming the network using only a touch tone
Dual-tone multi-frequency
Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling is used for telecommunication signaling over analog telephone lines in the voice-frequency band between telephone handsets and other communications devices and the switching center. The version of DTMF that is used in push-button telephones for tone dialing is...
telephone. One of his handlers at Tarnover explains that this is like a classical pianist being able to play entire sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
s and concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
s from memory. However Nick also has some personality flaws, amounting almost to a deathwish. These become manifest in exhibitions of his abilities, revealing his identity to his pursuers.
The background to the story includes a massive earthquake laying waste to the San Francisco Bay area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
in 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...
. Millions die and millions more are left to live on government handouts. The subsequent economic depression, coupled with the rootlessness enabled by access to online data and strong social pressure to be flexible (the results of corporations wanting highly mobile workforces without strong local ties), results in a fragmentation of society along religious, ethnic and a variety of class markers, what Toffler calls "subcults", including what would in 2010 be described as "gangs." The equitable distribution of data access and data privacy is a prominent theme in the book; characters who have access to information which is nominally secret enjoy demonstrable economic advantages over others lacking access to such data. In the novel, data privacy
Data privacy
Information privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them....
is reserved for corporate entities and individuals who may then conceal wrongdoing; by contrast, normal citizens do not enjoy significant privacy.
The world described in the book is dystopian, with laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
economics portrayed as leading inevitably to disaster as greed trumps long-term planning. The educational system is dysfunctional, with teachers unable to perform their jobs due to strictures. The only 'functional' educational system seen in the book is portrayed as an enclave, the tightly-controlled Tarnover school. Communities are either walled enclaves of privilege or largely lawless areas entirely lacking protection from corrupt civil authorities. Infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, and characters who reside within 'paid avoidance zones' receive compensation from the government in lieu of actual services.
Plot summary
The novel is set in the weeks following Nick's recapture after several years on the run, alternating between moral arguments with his interrogator, who is trying to discover why the program's star pupil had absconded, and flashbacks of his career. The interrogator is Paul Freeman, a graduate of another secret installation known as "Electric Skillet", which focuses on weapons and defense strategy.Although he initially felt at home at Tarnover, Nick eventually becomes aware of experiments in genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
being performed there. These produce monstrous deformed children who are disposed of when they are no longer needed for study. At this point Nick becomes determined to escape. He studies data processing, steals a personal ID code intended for privileged individuals who wish to live their lives without surveillance, and goes on the run. He uses the stolen computer access code to cover his data trails and create new identities for himself, easily adopting entire new personas. One is the pastor of a popular church, another is an idle playboy gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...
.
In this last role, calling himself Sandy Locke, he becomes the lover of Ina Grierson, a top executive at Ground to Space Industries, a powerful "hypercorp" known to all as G2S. Intending to use the computer facilities at G2S to ensure that his code is still valid after the six years he has been away, he signs on as a "systems rationalizer" with the company. This brings him into contact with Ina's daughter, Kate, who attracts him despite her plain appearance and simple lifestyle. At the age of 22, Nick's age when he left Tarnover, Kate is a perpetual student
Perpetual student
A perpetual student, also known as a professional student , is a college or university attendee who re-enrolls for several years, typically more than what is necessary to obtain a given degree....
at "UMKC
University of Missouri–Kansas City
The University of Missouri–Kansas City is a public university located in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. It is a branch of the University of Missouri System. Its main campus is in Kansas City's Rockhill neighborhood east of the Country Club Plaza...
". She is perceptive enough to penetrate Nick's adopted persona, deeply disturbing him even though she fascinates him. He visits her at home, helping her to clean out some of her possessions, and meeting her tame cougar, Bagheera. Bagheera is the product of her late father's genetic research into intelligence. He died shortly after abandoning the research because the government was using it to produce animals for military uses.
The 21st-century lifestyle produces a symptom called "overload" in many people, and most, including Nick, take tranquilizers to some degree. However Nick collapses completely when told that a representative from Tarnover is coming to meet him at G2S. He returns to Kate and confesses that he is not what he seems, asking for her help. She conducts him to one of the "paid avoidance areas" in California, where people are paid to do without the full panoply of modern technology, as an alternative to spending billions to rebuild infrastructure after the earthquake. After Nick risks exposure yet again in one of these places, they move to the least known one, a town called Precipice.
Precipice turns out to be a Utopian community of a few thousand people. The nearest comparison would be an agrarian, cottage industry community designed by William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
. Precipice is also the home of "Hearing Aid", an anonymous telephone confession service accessible to anyone in the country. Hearing Aid is also known as the "Ten Nines", after the phone number used to call it: 999-999-9999. People call the service and simply talk. Some rant, others seek sympathy, still others commit suicide while on the phone. Hearing Aid's promise is that nobody else, not even the government, will hear the call. The only response Hearing Aid gives to a caller is "Only I heard that, I hope it helped."
Nick and Kate settle into the community. The inhabitants include intelligent dogs that escaped from the projects that Kate's father worked on. These act as companions, guards, nannies, and even lie detectors, using their sense of smell. Nick rewrites the "computer tapeworm" that prevents the calls to Hearing Aid being monitored. While at G2S he became aware of massive backups of data being performed, clearly in anticipation of a major network outage. The Hearing Aid worm is designed to scramble network traffic if attacked, but Nick realizes that it could be destroyed if the authorities were prepared for the effects and ready to recover from them. His new worm, which he calls a "phage", cannot be removed without dismantling the entire network.
Possibly encouraged by the government, local gangs and tribes raid Precipice, burning down Nick and Kate's house before being overwhelmed by the dogs. Nick, suffering another overload, blames Kate for the incident, since she, following Hearing Aid policy, cut off a call from someone attempting to warn Precipice. He hits her, and then, filled with remorse, leaves the town. He finally reveals his location to the authorities when, encountering one of the "Roman circus" operations which broadcast live fights and other bloody exhibitions to the country, he responds to an "all comers" challenge by the father of the leader of one of the gangs, and cripples him in front of a nationwide audience.
At Tarnover, Paul Freeman takes charge of the interrogation. He was the representative whom Nick, as Sandy Locke, was supposed to meet at G2S. Freeman, a tall gaunt African-American, gradually comes to realize that he has more sympathy with Nick's views than his employer's, and eventually absconds himself, giving Nick computer access so that Nick can make his own escape. The precipitating event in this case is Kate's abduction by government agents, who bring her to Tarnover for further questioning and to threaten Nick.
With the code he gets from Freeman, he sets up an identity as an Army Major, with Kate as his prisoner. Once clear of Tarnover, they disappear together. This time around, Nick has another plan, and rather than running and hiding, he and Kate spend a number of months traveling the country, aided by an "invisible college'" of academics who are allies or former residents of Precipice. He creates a new "worm" which is designed to destroy all secrecy. (Brunner invented the term "worm" for this program, as a self-replicating program that propagates across a computer network - the term "worm
Computer worm
A computer worm is a self-replicating malware computer program, which uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other nodes and it may do so without any user intervention. This is due to security shortcomings on the target computer. Unlike a computer virus, it does not need to attach...
" was later adopted by computer researchers as the name for this type of program.)
The worm is eventually activated, and the details of all the government's dark secrets (clandestine genetic experimentation that produces crippled children, bribes and kickbacks from corporations, concealed crimes of high public officials) now become accessible from anywhere on the network - in fact, those most affected by a particular crime of a government official are emailed the full details. In place of the old system, Nick has designed the worm to enforce a kind of utilitarian socialism, with people's worth being defined by their roles in society, not their connections in high places. In effect, the network becomes the entire government and financial system, policing income for illegal money, freezing the accounts of criminals, while making sure money (or credit) flows to places where people are in need. This will only happen fully if the results of a plebiscite, again conducted over the network, allow it.
In a final atavistic attempt at revenge, the government orders a nuclear strike
Nuclear strike
Nuclear strike may refer to:* Nuclear warfare* An installation in the Strike series of video games* "Nuclear Strike", an episode of the BBC television series Spooks...
by a single aircraft from a local Air Force base. Warned by Hearing Aid, Nick is able to penetrate the military computers and manufacture a counter-order to stop the plane just before it reaches the town. The book ends optimistically, with there being no more privileged hiding of information, no more secret conspiracies of the rich and powerful.
Characters in "The Shockwave Rider"
Nick Haflinger is a wanderer, a man without a place to call his own, or a people he can identify with. His parents ceased to care for him at an early age, and he became a "rent-a-kid", living with a succession of mobile couples who had no time to settle down and start families of their own. Only when he was noticed by a schoolteacher, and subsequently recruited for Tarnover, did he find a group of people with whom he could identify.Kate Lilleberg is the daughter of a high-powered executive mother and a genius scientist father. She seems content to be a perpetual student, however, until she meets Nick, seeing in him a real person under the false persona. Unlike her friends, she is capable of deep commitment, as exemplified by her fulfilling her promise to her dead father, and caring for the cougar, Bagheera, bred by her father for his researches. Her chosen life has one feature her mother cannot appreciate: it allows her to remain in one place.
Paul T. Freeman has spent his 39 years studying, learning, and believing in the objectives of Tarnover and Electric Skillet. Nick's plan is to lead him to areas where his high intelligence will question his perceptions and beliefs, resulting in the inevitable turning away from the power elite he serves.
Ralph C. Hartz is the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Data Processing, and the man to whom Paul Freeman reports his progress on interrogating Nick. However he himself serves entrenched interests in Washington D.C. When Nick, with Paul's help, escapes with even more powerful codes than before, he is ruthlessly cast aside, not least because his superiors refuse to accept that the new codes must be disabled so soon after replacing the old ones.
Ina Grierson, Kate's mother, lives in world of personal power but is as prone to paranoia as the lowest of her underlings. Good looking at the age of forty-something, she clings to her youthfulness, partly by taking younger lovers. The stress of living in a connected world is partly defused by luxury vacations, on one of which she meets "Sandy Locke". Later, after Kate is abducted she is jolted out of her complacency, and with the aid of software written by "Sandy" she is able to penetrate the government smokescreen.
Reception
Spider RobinsonSpider Robinson
Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author.- Biography :Born in the Bronx, New York City, Robinson attended Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State...
gave the novel a mixed review, saying that while "the book reads well . . ., [i]ndividual sections are often brilliant, [and] the message is incisive and timely," that "as a story it limps" and that many characters, including the main antagonists, "are cut from cardboard." New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas was even more critical, saying that while Brunner was attempting to write "slice-of-life" fiction about a future society, the result of his arbitrary choices about social details is that "the entire fictional edifice collapses like a house of cards."
Themes
The novel was written shortly after two pivotal events of the 1970s, the resignation of Richard NixonRichard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and the overthrow of the Chilean President Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
. Both are referenced in the novel as examples, in Nixon's case, of a failed attempt by organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
to suborn the Presidency, and in the second, of the consequences of working against multinational commercial interests.
Most of the characters live with the feeling that their lives could be turned upside down in an instant because of someone breaking into the data held on the network. They also believe that the network knows more about them than they do about themselves. This is an extension of the sense of paranoia felt by many people in the 1970s, believing themselves to be powerless in the face of political and economic forces over which they had no control.
Perception is a recurrent theme in the novel. In particular, Brunner is concerned with perceptual patterns and how they can both help and mislead. Nick projects patterns of behavior to assume his personas, but Kate has "natural wisdom" which means that she ignores surface patterns to perceive the truth beneath. When they arrive in Precipice, the couple have to abandon their normal "urban pattern" to see the ways in which the town's unique design merges public and private space, along with natural and artificial structures.
The theme of patterns in perception runs through the entire novel. Future shock arises when reality and change disrupt patterns. People respond by falling into strong patterns within human nature, particularly tribalism.
Others try to convince themselves that all change is good, adopting the "plug in" lifestyle where they feel able to relocate to another city and insert themselves into a new social niche with a minimum of inconvenience. Their mobility is, however, a reflection of the failure of the lifestyle to satisfy them, resulting in more moves.
In this world of confusion, there are also companies specializing in psychological intervention. One such is "Anti-Trauma Inc." who are hired to "normalize" children, although what they do is more akin to "deprogramming
Deprogramming
Deprogramming refers to actions that attempt to force a person to abandon allegiance to a religious, political, economic, or social group. Methods and practices may involve kidnapping and coercion...
", as performed on children retrieved from cults
Cults
Cults is a suburb on the western edge of Aberdeen, Scotland. It lies on the banks of the River Dee and marks the eastern boundary of Royal Deeside.Cults, known for its historic granite housing, sits approximately six miles from the coast of the North Sea...
. They do significant harm to their charges, although as so often happens in Brunner's interconnected society, they also spend much money and time covering up their failures.
The worm
Brunner's concept of the "computer worm" was inspired by analogy with the tapeworm, a digestive parasite. A biological tapeworm consists of a head attached to a long train of reproductive segments, each of which can produce more worms when detached. Brunner's "data-net tapeworm" consists of a head followed by other segments, each being some kind of code which has effects on databases and other systems. Several are unleashed in the book. Besides the two Hearing Aid tapeworms, and Nick's ultimate tapeworm, there is a "denunciation tapeworm" created as revenge by a representative of "Anti-Trauma Inc." whom Nick insults and curses. At the time Nick was playing the role of a priest in a revivalist church. The intent was to destroy the church by canceling all its utility services. Nick in turn sends a worm into the network to destroy this one.- According to recent report, there were so many worms and counter-worms loose in the data-net now, the machines had been instructed to give them low priority unless they related to a medical emergency. - from the novel.
External links
Stephen H. Goldman, "John Brunner's Dystopias: Heroic Man in Unheroic Society", Science Fiction StudiesScience Fiction Studies
Science Fiction Studies is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R.D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year by DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic...
16, 1978