Subject: REVIEW: "The Jericho Iteration", Allen Steele

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Aug 1998 14:51:46 -0400

The Jericho Iteration, by Allen Steele
		Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade

"The Jericho Iteration", Allen Steele, 1994, 0-441-00271-4,
U$5.50/C$6.99

It's rather amazing how little science there is in science fiction.  Even
in stories of the near future, such as this one, technology takes a very
distant backseat to politics and plotting.  Which is probably as it should
be, but it does make you wonder why it's called science fiction.

Let's get rid of the plot first.  Lone individual against the mighty
forces, conspiracy of the elite plotting to overthrow the last bastion of
democracy, and a rogue program takes over the defence forces and uses
force against the defenders.  However, the rogue isn't the bad guy.

Steele does give us some technology.  I purely love his personal/palmtop/
vest pocket computer/personal digital assistant.  Given the advances in
time and technology, it seems just a little bit shy on memory and storage
space, but we'll let that ride.  Having both keyboard and voice command is
undoubtedly the way to go, for reasons very similar to those in the book.
Of course, the author does not seem to realize that you can track any cell
phone, as long as it is on, to a very close area.  Also, nobody seems to
have done much work on encryption over the next few years.  Lastly, I
don't think much of the disk format.  I suspect about 7 cm is about as
small as you can get before people start losing the disks, which would be
an annoyance.  Human factors, doncha know.  (And CD-ROMs are already
optical disks.)

I'm glad to see that email is tagged as the way to get the word out fast
and far.  However, the expert geeks involved in the story don't seem to
have fully cottoned on to the fact that you can send partial info if
you're short of time, and you can set up systems to send automatically.
The tension in the climactic scene as our intrepid heroes are facing the
end is somewhat reduced when the reader keeps on thinking "just use chron,
OK?"

But, of course, my real interest is in the iteration of the title.  A
repeating, self-reproducing program.  In other words, a virus.  Well, they
have to be other words, if you want to be pedantic about it.  The virus in
the book is P1 all over again, a fairly classic Shoch and Hupp type
segmented worm program.  And, like P1, the bigger it gets, the smarter it
gets, until it becomes self-aware.

Now, there are a couple of points here.  This is the classically mythical
"just-wave-the-disk-near-the-computer-and-it-gets-infected" type virus.
For those of us who have been battling the "Good Times" hoax for years, I
can't be overjoyed about this idea.  Of course, just as we have started to
get people to realize that you can't get infected just by reading email,
Microsoft comes along and fixes that bug, so I really can't argue too
strenuously against it.  Never underestimate the stupidity, and cupidity,
of large software vendors.  But it avoids detection, elimination, and
access control by dealing with the "source code" of security programs.
Repeat after me: once it's compiled, it's object code.  Source code
doesn't matter, and isn't kept with the executables.  Of course, if it
could find, and associate, the source code with the target executable,
that would give you a leg up on disassembly.

But a virus cannot be undetectable.  In fact, this one isn't.  Early on in
the game a fairly simple file management program, with no particular
special features, is able to detect the virus and infected programs.  So
how come it is so hard to detect?  Hard to eliminate I might grant you,
but it certainly seems to be easy to find.

%A   Allen Steele
%C   200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY  10016
%D   1994
%G   0-441-00271-4
%I   Ace/Berkley/Boulevard/Charter/Diamond/Jove Books
%O   U$5.50/C$6.99 +1-800-788-6262 [email-masked]
%P   279 p.
%T   "The Jericho Iteration"