I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a Bruce Sterling book I hadn’t read yet. I like his writing and this book I liked even more than usual. Sterling is one of a very short list of authors who can write books that are some level of “cyber” and I will buy their story and not pick nits with their tech. This says more about most authors than it does about my l337ne$$, but I like tech fiction books and I don’t read enough of them. This novel surrounds September 11th. The short premise is “what do the super smart cyberwarriors do when the playing field changes?” It’s loosely about one super smart techie guy who starts out working for a big tech firm doing somethingorother and quickly gets enlisted into the war on terror, with surprising results. The guy is a likeable and believable techie character and the wholeplot has a real feel to it, even as it plots out a future that is somewhat dystopian and bleak. Sterling knows his stuff and tells a good story while at the same time not populating it with cardboard cutout characters.