Subject: LOVING LITTLE EGYPT by Thomas McMahon

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Date: 17 Aug 88 00:01:13 GMT

LOVING LITTLE EGYPT by Thomas McMahon
	       Penguin, 1988 (1987c) ISBN 0-14-009331-1, $6.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is a work of fiction.  Just because in it Nikola Tesla invents a
machine that could shake a building to rubble doesn't mean that he really
did.  Unfortunately, it also means that just because in it Edison gets his
comeuppance, it doesn't mean that he did so in real life.

     Neither of these people is the main character of LOVING LITTLE EGYPT:
Little Egypt is.  No, not the dancer, but an almost blind telephone hacker
of the early 1920s.  He has discovered how to work through all the switches
and operators to make the telephone system do whatever he wants.  And now he
finds out that the telephone company is going to change their switching
system to something even easier to break into.  Not everyone is as honest as
he is; not everyone is as careful not to destroy anything.  (In this
respect, he seems almost patterned after Bill Landreth, who in his book OUT
OF THE INNER CIRCLE decries the destructive tendencies of many hackers,
while claiming that he and the rest of the inner circle were interested only
in the challenge and were careful never to damage anything.)  But Little
Egypt can't get the telephone company to listen to him.  So he decides to
get help: from Alexander Graham Bell, from Nikola Tesla, from anyone he can
find.

     For those of us who are interested in telephone and computer security,
this book will be particularly interesting, though I'm not sure I believe
even half of the methods Little Egypt supposedly uses (a copper bullwhip
lashed around the lines to eavesdrop on conversations? really?).  The main
strength of LOVING LITTLE EGYPT, however, is the development of the
characters.  McMahon draws his characters far more thoroughly than most
other science fiction authors (and, yes, it is science fiction, by any
reasonable definition).  He doesn't do it by slighting the technical aspects
(though, as I say, they are extremely fanciful), but by not being afraid to
make his characters quirky.  Perhaps many science fiction authors, wary of
being accused of drawing characters with "funny hats," have shied away from
any sort of characterization at all.  My only objection to McMahon's
characters is that the character of the blind (or near-blind) telephone
hacker is becoming something of a cliche these days.

     For people in the telecommunications industry, for people in the
computer industry, and for people just looking for a fun book which takes a
sideways look at the early history of electricity and telephony, LOVING
LITTLE EGYPT is highly recommended.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					201-957-2070
				UUCP:	att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]
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					Copyright 1988 Evelyn C. Leeper