The Bug - Softcover

Ullman, Ellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908968141 ISBN 13: 9781908968142

Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2013

Synopsis

The debut novel by the acclaimed American novelist and former computer programmer Ellen Ullman, The Bug is both a novel of ideas and a suspense story. 'Thrilling and intellectually fearless . . . If more contemporary novels delivered news this relevant and wise they'd have to stop declaring the death of the novel' - The New York Times In one of the computer-dictated pauses that now constantly intrude on our lives, Roberta Walton starts to think back twenty years, to her first job in computing, to the bug she found there and the man it destroyed. Ellen Ullman's acclaimed first novel compellingly, thrillingly explores the connections between us and our machines, and between programming, obsession and madness. As the bug - bug UI-01017, The Jester - teases, defies and threatens its creators. Ellen Ullman's The Bug is published by Pushkin Press. Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, a memoir of her time as a software engineer during the early years of the internet revolution, became a cult classic and established her as a writer of considerable talent; with her second book, The Bug, she became an acclaimed and vital novelist; By Blood is her third. All three are published in the UK by Pushkin Press. Her essays and opinion pieces have been widely published in venues such as Harper's, The New York Times, Salon, and Wired. She lives in San Francisco.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The Bug is a mesmerizing first novel about a demonic, elusive computer bug and the havoc it wreaks on the lives of the people around it. This rare combination?a novel of ideas and a suspense?is a story about obsession and love that takes readers deep into both the personal and virtual life.

In 1984, at the dawn of the personal-computer era, Roberta Walton, a novice software tester at a SiliconValley start-up, stumbles across a bug. She brings it to its inadvertent creator, Ethan Levin, a longtime programmer who is working at the limits of his knowledge and abilities. Both believe this is a bug like any other to be found and fixed and crossed off the list. But no matter how obsessively Ethan combs through the depths of the code, he can't find its cause. Roberta runs test after test but can't make the bug appear at will. Meanwhile, the bug, living up to its name, "The Jester," shows itself only at the least opportune times and jeopardizes the fate of the company.

Under the pressures of his obsession with the bug and his rapidly deteriorating personal life, Ethan begins to unravel. Roberta, on the other hand, is drawn to the challenge. Forced to learn how to program, she comes to appreciate the intense intimacy of speaking the computer's language.

As she did in Close to the Machine, Ellen Ullman brilliantly limns the space between human beings and computers?a space we all occupy every day as we peer into our monitors. Ullman has been a computer programmer for more than twenty years, and having switched from code to prose, she has shown herself to be a unique, revelatory writer. She is the insider who can articulate the realities of the technical world, taking readers to emotional and intellectual places fiction has never brought them before. With The Bug, Ullman proves she is not only a remarkable essayist but also a master storyteller.

About the Author

Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine, a memoir of her time as a software engineer during the early years of the internet revolution, became a cult classic and established her as a writer of considerable talent; with her second book, The Bug, she became an acclaimed and vital novelist; By Blood is her third. She lives in San Francisco.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1908968141
• ISBN 13: 9781908968142
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384