Format C: A Novel

An epic battle between the forces of good and evil centers around the desperate struggle to fix the Millennium Bug as Chicago investigative reporter Dan Levin, his girlfriend Park, and her teenage computer whiz son Sal become the only hope for stopping power-hungry computer mogul Ben Hinnom. IP.

A Y2K-induced millennium meltdown is the subject of Black's over-the-top first novel, which pits a self-infatuated investigative reporter against an even more egomaniacal computer mogul who's trying to implement a bizarre form of mind control through the software he manufactures. Dan Levin is the independently wealthy freelance journalist who learns that Windgazer CEO Ben Hinnom has assassinated one of his corporate competitors, allowing the Windgazer operating system to dominate the market as the race to beat the Y2K bug picks up steam. After landing a book deal to expose Hinnom, Levin is assisted in his investigation by his girlfriend, Park McGuire, a programmer whose teenage son also happens to be a computer prodigy. When Park is transferred from Chicago to Israel to assist in a top-secret effort to break Windgazer's stranglehold on the market, Dan accompanies her and finds that deep within the holy city lies the key to his rival's defeat. After rummaging through a series of ancient scrolls, Dan uses dodgey biblical archeology to hunt down Hinnom. The battle between journalist and executive remains fairly believable for the first half of the book, but Black goes off the deep end with the mind control subplot. On the eve of the millennium in Jerusalem, the freedom of the world hangs in the balance as the equally unsympathetic Levin and Hinnom struggle over a formatting solution for the year 2000. Hinnom's fraudulent fix will give him terrifying power, while the "format c:" of the title will save the day. The potential of Y2K as a storytelling device gets lost among Black's many detours to remote desert spots, leaving readers to wade through pages of clich?s as this erratic yarn veers toward a preposterous conclusion. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Massively conceived, neatly chiseled computer novel that begins on the wrong foot with lists of consumer goods enjoyed by a sybaritic hero only a Honda Del Sol salesman could love. Black (The Transfer Agreement, 1984) soon gets past this sticker-price prose by revealing that Chicago publisher Dan Levin has sold his bundle of magazines to Ben Hinnom, a megabillionaire and multinational media-conglomerate Australian who plans to reorganize all computers on the planet behind his Windgazer 99 multitask operating system. But first he must take over the Zoom operating system, just being introduced and better than his own. But is Windgazer, which will run every chip everywhere, actually a device of . . . well, does 99.9 upside down give you a hint, a touch of Revelation? The plot turns on the Y2K millennium glitch and Windgazers lightning ability to fight off all computer failures worldwide, including those in air-traffic control, the financial markets, the credit-card industry, the Internet, etc. When the world taps into the system on the midnight of the millennium, will mankind fall into the devil's handsor bring about salvation by typing Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The theme of religion and computers has been explored before by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (1992; Bantam Spectra, 1993. reprint), but journalist Black makes the issue even more real by using the current computer industry wars and the impending Y2K crisis as his backdrop. The richest man on earth, owner of the world's biggest computer company, uses Y2K to make a play for global domination. What results instead is a battle between good and evil, fought in the Holy Land as the millennium turns. While at times this first novel is bogged down by geographic detail, for the most part it is an entertaining and provocative examination of our dependency on computers and the amount of information we reveal about ourselves each time we log on. Though the appeal of this work may fade once the Y2K crisis passes, it is still worth adding a copy to your collection.ADebra Mitts, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.