BKJRCHIT.RVW   980519

"The Jericho Iteration", Allen Steele, 1994, 0-441-00271-4,
U$5.50/C$6.99
%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 online@penguin.com
%P   279 p.
%T   "The Jericho Iteration"

It's rather amazing how little science there is in science fiction,
sometimes.  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.

Well, 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 (cf. BKADOLP1.RVW), 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.  And, 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.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   BKJRCHIT.RVW   980519