I’ve just noticed that Mark Russinovich (of Sysinternals fame) is publishing a fiction book. There was another CompSci author, Roger Pressman, who’s non-fiction work was part of the reading during my university course, who had also written a fiction book, and despite only having one review on Amazon sounds like an exciting read. Both are techno-thrillers. I’d not expect a historical romance from a software developer!
I guess in both cases the authors have enough “street cred” to take a bit of time off to experiment with this idea of being a published author, and return back to their ordinary careers in case of failure – was this something they always wanted to do, but were too afraid to pursue full time?
One interesting side note about the “Aymara Bridge” is that (from another review I cannot find), it touches on trivalent logic – i.e. instead of True/False, it has an additional third state. Apparently this logic type can be inferred from the language of the Aymara culture - http://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html. The third value indicates a kind of uncertainty that’s absent from “traditional” logic, but is linguistically somewhat natural. Fascinating concept. You can still construct some kind of logic system out of it, it’s just that it’s not terribly suited to computers. Pressman cites this idea as the inspiration for his book.
 | From the description at Amazon: The horror of cyberterrorism explodes on the page in Russinovich’s first novel. A plane over the Atlantic suddenly needs to reboot its computer to stay in the air, and the pilots barely avert disaster. A hospital network mixes up patient information, resulting in the death of several people. A law firm, which has lost all of its clients' data and can’t get its system running again, turns to Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst and computer expert. He discovers that all of the crashes are insidiously connected, and an even greater disaster is coming. Computer technospeak is handled with ease by Russinovich, who makes the jargon understandable for nongeeks but does so without losing authenticity. His background at Microsoft ensures that he knows what he’s writing about, but, equally important, he constructs a gripping narrative. A terrifying tale made all the more frightening by our concern that it could offers a glimpse into the future, Russinovich’s thriller just could become one of those books that prompts a real-world response, in this case a wake-up call for greater cybersecurity methods. |
 | From the description at Amazon: Matt Sousa is young archaeologist with an unusual background. On a dig in the foothills of the Andes mountains, Matt uncovers a mysterious Inca object that appears to be almost 1,000 years old, but there's something odd about it, and it's unlike anything he's ever seen. |
