Not that Clark! Former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clark, has written a sci-fi thriller that apparently is loaded with grounded futurism. I listened to a fascinating interview with him on the Diane Rehm radio program. If you click below you can listen to the hour-long segment. I haven’t read Breakpoint yet, but it sounds like good airplane reading.
WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio – The Diane Rehm Show for Tuesday January 23, 2007:
11:00Richard Clarke: “Breakpoint” (Putnam)
The counterterrorism czar to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush presents his latest novel. It’s a tale of cyber-insecurity, the growing threat from China, and a not too distant future where advances in science and technology threaten what it means to be human.
Guests
From Publishers Weekly (via Amazon.com)
Veteran counterterrorism official Clarke, author of Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror and the novel The Scorpion’s Gate, proves once again that authenticity, insider information and top-secret access artfully applied trumps fancy writing with this cutting-edge, nail-biter techno-thriller set in 2012. Clarke’s intriguing plot centers on the development of Living Software, a massive computer program designed to travel throughout the Internet correcting computer errors and creating software without any help or oversight from human beings. Volunteers would be connected to this program in a project aimed at reverse engineering the human brain. Added to this fascinating mix is the Transhumanist movement, whose labs grow designer children with extra chromosomes. Mysterious entities who would deny this progress are blowing up government Internet connections, killing scientists and destroying the labs participating in this research. Savvy readers will ignore the evidence that points to the obvious suspect, but still be surprised at the identity of the perpetrator when all is revealed. (Jan.)
“Breakpoint” (Richard A. Clarke)
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FYI: Here’s another techno-thriller on a hot topic written by an insider: “Rad Decision: A Novel of Nuclear Power”. See http://RadDecision.blogspot.com for details, reviews, and the whole book online at no cost – - or it’s now available in paperback as well at online retailers. This book was also written to be “airplane reading”. The author (me) has worked in the US nuclear industry for twenty years.