The Incursion - A Novel

When an unknown, unauthorized genius electronically invades the world's most secure computer system, all the evidence points to the brilliant but innocent young physicist Peter Cassidy

Author of The New Alchemists, a nonfiction account of Silicon Valley, Hanson has turned his considerable expertise to fiction, and the result is an excellent thriller. When the nation's most important, and presumably most secure, computer systemcode named SEEKis compromised, the world's financial and health-care systems are jeopardized, along with the launching codes for America's "Peacemaker" missiles. Implicated in the unauthorized entry into the system's upper levels is Peter Cassidy, a young physicist who has turned in his chips for a fishing rod until the DID Corporation, which operates SEEK, brings him in. To clear himself, Cassidy must find the true culprit, who has threatened a second, more damaging incursion into the system. Hanson keeps his high-tech thriller alive with taut action and strong characters, including a couple of odd-ball computer geniuses, one of whom is financing a giant rock concert that plays into the book's exciting finale. While some of the threads don't pull together as neatly or tightly as they might, this is still an exciting and suspenseful narrative.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This first novel from the author of The New Alchemists is for the computer naive and the computer literate alike. The central characters are young, affluent, curiously detached. The plot is smooth, polished, equally yuppie: the SEEK central computer complex controls an enormous range of operations across the country, including missile installations and financial, telecommunications, and transportation networks. A series of computer "malfunctions and irregularities" threatens to disrupt the entire country. One man is accused and the story follows his frantic search for the real culprits along the West Coast from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco. The technical jargon, the suspenseful writing, the suspended morality of the plot, and the cool interplay among the characters reminded this reader of the mood and atmosphere of "The Consultant," a recently imported British television series. Well done. Jean B. Palmer, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.